The DOOM Chronicles
by Obsidian Productions
Summary: A full novelization of the DOOM universe. The Union Aerospace Corporation is the largest company in human history. They are about to open a portal to another dimension, a hellish wasteland that is home to pure evil. And once they open that door, they won't be able to close it, and all of mankind will have to pay the price for their hubris...
1. EPISODE 00: Opportunity Knocking

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** _So, I thought I'd talk a little bit about this fan fiction before kicking the whole thing off. Some of you may be familiar with me and my original attempt to novelize the original DOOM Trilogy, starting about ten years ago now. (Holy crap I'm getting old.) This is going to be much bigger than that. What I'm trying to do here is to write my own personal end-all, be-all novelization of all things DOOM. However, to clarify, this is my own personal interpretation of the DOOM universe._

 _So what does THAT mean?_

 _Basically, it means that if you're a fact junkie, you probably will be pissed off at me a lot, because this is not meant to be a direct interpretation of the games. The story will largely revolve around Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth, and it will be taking elements, to varying degrees, from almost all the other media in the DOOM universe. (Except the movie. I hate the movie.)_

 _To give you an idea of the scope of this story, there's going to be nine Episodes (including Episode Zero here), and each Episode will be broken up into parts, usually three parts. There will also be three different protagonists. So...yeah, it's gonna be huge. If I'm lucky, it'll take me a year to write this, though honestly it'll probably take longer._

 _One thing I also want to address is that I will be taking breaks in between Episodes, because I don't want to get burned out. I'm also not going to have a strict uploading schedule. As much as I would love to, the reality of the situation is that I'm an indie author now and my main focus has become writing original novels in order to pay my bills and keep from starving. And to keep from having to get a real job and wanting to kill myself._

 _So I hope you enjoy the story. Here we go!_

* * *

 **EPISODE ZERO  
** – _The Hell Before the Storm_ –

* * *

They were serving what was laughably referred to as meatloaf again in the mess.

Watts supposed he shouldn't complain, at least not out loud. It was a step up from the stuff he'd been stuck with back on Earth, which was impressive in its own right. It showed what kind of spending power the UAC had, that the slop they served in the cafeteria was actually better. Theoretically, at least. With a sigh, he grabbed the Styrofoam takeout box of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy and corn, then booked it for the door.

He wasn't in the mood to talk tonight.

It was the end of a particularly long shift, another day in his glorious life on Phobos. He stepped out of the mess and came into one of the big gray hallways that crisscrossed Phobos Labs. He'd been here three months already and he still hesitated sometimes when trying to figure out how to get from one place to another. Getting lost was embarrassing enough on its own, it was all the more embarrassing when you were in the Marines for shit's sake. Not that he actually considered himself a Marine anymore.

Technically speaking, the Space Division of the United Marine Corps _was_ , as the name implied, still a part of the UMC. But that was as far as the reality went: in name only. What _really_ went on up here, he thought morosely as he made his way back to his 'apartment', was that the UMC and the UAC had cut a deal. The UAC gave the Marines first pick on some choice weapons technology and, in return, the Corps sent up a small army to provide protection. Protection against what, no one had ever elaborated on.

Or, that's how it was supposed to work, anyway.

Nowadays, what with a new war popping up weekly back on Earth, the UMC didn't exactly have a lot of its best and brightest to ship up to Mars and her two moons where nothing was happening. So, to hold up their end of the bargain, they'd been sending rookies that didn't score too high and rejects. Guys who should have been discharged or idiots who'd gotten a squadmate killed. In Watts' case, he'd screwed around with a General's daughter.

That was a year ago, and he was still paying for it.

Watts heaved a world-weary sigh as he found his place and shoved his thumb up against the pad, then punched in his four digit personal identification code. The door slid open, creaking slightly cause something in the internal works was gunked up and there was no one around to fix it. Just one more thing on the list.

Watts closed and locked his door behind him, set the food down on his desk and walked over to the mini-fridge and snagged a can of Mountain Dew Lightyear. As he plopped down into his chair and dug into the meal, he knew he should be doing a better job of keeping his spirits up. When he'd gotten here a year ago, he'd made a promise to himself that he wasn't going to sulk or give up. He was going to try and make the best of it.

And he had, or at least, he thought so.

The fact that he was, in fact, a pretty decent solider, helped him keep in line, and it got him noticed by the Brass. The Brass in question being a humorless hardass named Master Sergeant Kelly. Watts had never been sure what the guy had done to get shipped up here, and had ultimately figured that he was a holdover from back during the days they sent actually qualified Marines up here. No wonder he'd always been so pissed, they sent him idiots, morons, rejects and kids who didn't know what they were getting into or only cared what they were getting out of.

But that was in the past now.

Kelly and the ilk he presided over were back down on Mars, in the aptly named Mars City. In nine months, Watts had received two promotions. Back on Earth, he'd gotten up to Corporal, but he'd been busted back down to Private when they'd upshipped him to Mars. He'd hit Private First Class in a month, then Lance Corporal after another three months. It had surprised him, but apparently standing out of the crowd wasn't really hard up here.

Although it _had_ made him nervous. There were rumors that a lot of the cargo the UAC shipped back to Earth were bodybags.

Finally, three months ago, he'd been upgraded back up to Corporal and given a new position up on Phobos. The first month had been nothing but Hangar duty, patrolling, standing guard or unloading the seemingly endless supply of polished, silver crates that came and went in all shapes and sizes to and from Phobos Base.

It was harder to stand out of the crowd up here, because they only sent people who actually knew what they were doing to Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. But within a month, he'd been shifted over to Command Control. And just recently he'd been moved yet again to Phobos Labs. That was high-tech, top-secret stuff.

He knew he should be thrilled, he was actually moving up in the world, and fast, too.

He even had his own apartment, though it was tiny, it was _his_. Plus, free room and board, and there wasn't really anywhere to spend his cash so his bank account was just getting fatter and fatter. Though he wasn't sure what the hell he was going to spend it on, if and when he ever went back to Earth. And they only did bi-monthly inspections up here, so it wasn't like he had to be a super neat freak and keep his apartment all spit-and-polish twenty four-seven.

And yet, despite all of this, despite everything good that had happened, today had just kind of gotten to him.

Most of it had to do with the fact that he wasn't actually _progressing_ in his life, it was just the illusion of progress. Back on Earth, sure, he'd been fighting in every hellhole on the planet, but he felt like he'd been _doing_ something. He'd been fighting off psychos with bio-bombs or religious fanatics trying to commit genocide or whatever flavor of the week terrorist had popped up. He'd been killing guys that had absolutely no problem setting off a bomb in a crowded building, guys who didn't give a shit who they killed.

But here...what the hell was he doing up here?

Guarding some secret that no one was ever going to get to see?

Despite all the official reports, the stuff he heard in rumors and the stuff the UAC did actually release to the public, he had the feeling that beneath all their medical breakthroughs and top-of-the-line weapons programs and never-before-seen, revolutionary construction materials projects was something else. Something hidden.

Something totally sci-fi.

But _what_?

He had no idea, and unless he was selected for the 'Special Assignments' that he sometimes heard about, he'd never find out.

Watts put it out of his mind as he finished his meal. He was starving at least, so he'd eaten the meal right down to the Styrofoam bottom. Then he dropped the remnants into his garbage chute, grabbed another Dew and snagged his PDA. It was always a good idea to check your PDA. Never knew when something interesting might pop up.

He brought it out of sleep mode and went to the messages tab. He hesitated. There was a single new message.

 **You Have Been Selected**

His heartbeat began to thrum a little faster. He swallowed and tapped the screen. A message popped up.

 _CPL. Adam Watts,_

 _You have been hand-selected by Master Sergeant Willits to be part of a top-secret task force. Details to follow in person. Report to Dr. Adrian Carmack tomorrow (11.10.2145) at 0700 for further instructions._

 _-SGT. Kaplan_

Holy shit.

Watts read the short message three times over, then slowly set his PDA down on his desk and sat back. He'd heard of Sergeant Kaplan, seen him around a few times, actually. The guy was supposed to be part of some squad that routinely dealt with the deepest, darkest secrets of the UAC. All rumors...or so he'd thought.

Watts felt a smile spreading across his face.

Maybe things were starting to look up.

* * *

He'd only heard the name Carmack in whispers.

Watts found himself wondering why he was going to see a scientist when he'd been hand-selected by a Master Sergeant. It didn't make much sense...then again, this _was_ a UAC operation. As much as they might liked to believe otherwise, the UMC were not top dogs around here. He'd actually had to consult his map, which had been updated with a strict warning. Previously, about fifty or so percent of his map of Phobos Labs had simply been blanked out, since he didn't have proper clearance. Now only about thirty percent of it was blanked out, and the warning said that he was legally obligated to not show anyone this updated map who didn't have the proper clearance.

Serious stuff.

So now, here he was, standing in front of a sealed door that bore the name **ADRIAN CARMACK, PH.D** on the front in bold, black text that stood out in stark contrast to the polished silver titanium beneath it.

He'd been waiting for a few minutes now.

Abruptly, the door opened up.

"Come in, Corporal Watts."

Watts stepped inside and found himself looking at the good doctor. The man in charge of Phobos Labs. His office was...not very big, surprisingly. Though the wall behind him was made of floor-to-ceiling, unbreakable glass and showed the dismal, gray landscape of Phobos. The man himself sat behind a large desk of polished wood. That had to be expensive. Watts found that he had an immediate dislike of Carmack.

He wasn't entirely sure why. There was just something...sleazy about him. Maybe it was his too-long, greasy black hair or his slightly rat-like features or the fact that he wore a completely self-satisfied smirk.

"Reporting as order, Doctor Carmack," Watts replied, standing at attention but not saluting. He wasn't saluting this man, and not just because he was a civilian.

"Corporal Watts...I know this is a little unorthodox and I won't keep you. I know Willits and Kaplan will pitch a bitch if I do. But I try to make it a point to meet the men and women Willits selects for this...special project of ours. And, well, to take care of a simple legal matter, as well. I just like to know if I can see what he sees when he makes these selections."

"What do you see, Doctor?" Watts replied.

"Courage," Carmack murmured. "Some determination. Guilt. Disappointment. But you aren't stupid, at least. I can see that. And so can he..."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Behind him, the dead, colorless surface of Phobos remained utterly still.

"Well," Carmack said, slipping a piece of paper across the desk, "let's get on with it. This is essentially a legal document stating that everything you are involved in from here on out is considered code BLACK by the UAC and the UMC. Talking about anything you see to anyone who is not directly involved with this project is hazardous to your career. And possibly your health. This is a confidentiality agreement and if you break it, I promise you'll be thrown into a prison out on the Belt and you won't ever come back. Is that clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good!" He slapped a thin, metal pen down on the paper. "Please sign."

Watts grabbed the pen, removed the cap, pressed the tip to the paper...and hesitated. But only for a second. It didn't matter what was on the other end of this secret. He needed to know, one way or the other. He couldn't abide sitting here, playing statue all day where nothing ever happened. So he signed the paper.

"Perfect. You can find Sergeant Kaplan and his squad waiting for you down the hall to the left in the armory. Hurry along."

Watts nodded, turned and left the room.

A thousand questions shot through his brain as he moved down the too-bright, chromium corridor, passing a few technicians and scientists too deep in their work to notice him, as well as a few men and women in green security armor standing guard. He recognized a few of them. Right now, he put all the questions aside.

Hopefully, there would be answers soon enough.

He found the armory Carmack had indicated and, after passing a thumbprint and retinal scan, he was allowed inside, where he found a little over half a dozen men and women gearing up for what looked like a serious mission.

"Corporal Watts, you've finally made it," one of the men, who he realized was Sergeant Kaplan, said.

"Yes, Sergeant," Watts replied, snapping to attention.

"Yeah, we don't got time for that." He pointed to the far corner of the room. "Your shit's over there. Suit up, grab your weapons, we're due in fifteen."

"Yes, Sergeant."

He marched across the room to the broad locker the man had indicating, passing several of the others there. He counted eight of them in total. They all looked pretty pro. All of them Marines. _Real_ Marines, not the rejects they normally shipped up here. Or so he hoped. Whatever they were doing, it was obviously serious.

Putting aside his questions, he opened up the locker and found a suit of green environmental security armor. It was fresh, new and shiny, a variation on the combat gear he'd gotten used to. Definitely more sophisticated. It even had his name on the chest. He began pulling it on. He'd been trained on armor like this and knew his way around it. He also noted, as he suited up, that the armory was pretty fully stocked.

He'd seen rows and racks of guns, guns and more guns. Shotguns, pistols, heavy-ass chainguns. He'd even seen a few rocket launchers. Who the hell needed fucking rocket launchers in space? That seemed insane.

Not to mention, what were they planning on fighting that required _rocket launchers_?

But that was just another question to stow for later, or maybe never. The Brass never seemed to have any real compunctions about keeping the lower ranks in the dark, forever if they could manage it. Not that he entirely blamed them most of the time. There was generally a lot of good reasons to keep secret shit secret.

Of course, by that logic, it was all too easy to keep _everything_ secret, including illicit activities.

Watts managed to get the suit on in five minutes. He also grabbed a pistol for his holster, a shotgun and several shells and magazines.

"Ready, Marines?!" Kaplan called.

"Ready, Sergeant!" all of them, including Watts, shouted back.

"Good, let's haul ass!"

Watts fell in line with the rest of them as they left the armory. They marched for about a minute before coming to one of the trams that connected the various buildings of Phobos Base. He wasn't sure why, but the nine main structures of the base were kept fairly far apart, connected only by trams. Maybe some kind of security feature.

Once they got settled into one of these trams and it was shooting off across the surface, Kaplan felt the need to get introductions out of the way.

"Corporal Watts, welcome to Hades Squad. Quick introductions. I'm Sergeant Kaplan. That there is my second, Corporal Fletcher. Our medics, Lance Corporal Bryant and PFC Rogers. Our tech-heads, Lance Corporal Wong and PFC Morris. And our two kids with guns, Privates Davis and Berry. You'll be replacing Corporal Cloud. Questions?"

"Yeah, what happened to Corporal Cloud?" Watts replied.

"Transferred," Kaplan replied.

It sounded like a lie, but he wasn't willing to press the issue. At least not right now.

"What will we be doing, Sergeant?" he asked.

"Shockingly, more of the same you've been doing. Standing guard, patrolling and, if you're unlucky enough, playing escort for some eggheads. It's not _what_ we'll be doing that forced you to sign a 'talk and we'll boot your ass to the Belt' clause, Corporal, it's _where_ we'll be doing it. Don't worry, you'll see soon enough. Just pay attention, listen to orders and you'll be fine."

"Yes, Sergeant," he replied.

Watts tried to make himself remember the names of all the people he'd just been introduced to, but, unfortunately, he could only really remember one of them right now, and that's because she was giving him a really suggestive look.

Corporal Fletcher.

She had her helmet off at the moment and goddamn if she wasn't a picture perfect poster model. Under normal circumstances, he'd feel more than honored, and thrilled, to be getting that kind of look from her. The kind of look that a lot of Marine women seemed to perfect, it was a kind of no-bullshit, I'm interested in sex and not much else kind of look. Nor was it a look he got very often, either. He knew he was kind of goofy looking.

But right now…

Well, his dick was the thing that had gotten him thrown into space in the first place.

So, instead, he looked out the window. They had passed two other structures on the way to their destination. He knew about them from the million times he'd seen the generic map of the whole base. The first was Central Processing, whatever that was, then there was the Computer Station. And then, finally, up ahead, their destination, was the cryptically labeled Phobos Anomaly. There'd been all kind of speculation about it, most of it contradictory. Personally, Watts thought they had some kind of alien device or craft there.

Kind of like a contemporary Area 51.

Man, what a disappoint that had turned out to be after they finally opened it up to the public in 2097. He'd read whole books about the mystery back before then. People though there was all sorts of stuff in there.

The tram moved into a tunnel of dark metal, lit by rings of white light that gave the space beyond the windows a creepy atmosphere. It came to a halt as it locked into an airlock and was cycled through. As it passed through the other side, Kaplan spoke up.

"Helmets on, Marines! Time to look tough for the geniuses."

Watts snapped his helmet into place. There was a moment of claustrophobia, then he relaxed as the HUD came online and the soft whispering of the air conditioning kicked in. That helped, for some reason.

The tram slowed gently and finally came to a halt. Beyond the windows, he could see...just an ordinary tram station. It didn't look basically any different from the place they'd just left ten minutes ago. Well, except for the beefed up security, including several more guards and a pair of drone guns that hung from the ceiling.

Drone guns that tracked them as they stepped off the tram.

" _Please halt and wait while your identifications are verified,"_ a soothing, disembodied female voice said to them.

Watts held still. Those were big guns, and the guards didn't look too friendly either. They were wearing black armor and held Raptor SMGs. He recognized them, too, though only vaguely. He'd never actually figured out what was up with Z-Sec, or even if that's what they were really called. He'd seen them a few times around Phobos Base and Mars City.

" _All personnel are identified and cleared. You may proceed."_

"Let's go," Kaplan said.

Watts followed him and the others up a flight of stairs to an enormous door that reminded him of something that should be in a bank, or maybe a bunker. It was huge, solid and chromed. Despite its size, it didn't take long to slide into its niche in the wall, admitting them access to the room beyond. Which turned to be _enormous_.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

"Stow it, Corporal," Kaplan snapped, though there wasn't much venom in his voice. Probably everyone reacted like that the first time.

It wasn't just that the room was huge, it was what was in the center of it.

Watts had never seen anything like it before.

It sat in the middle of an immense room. It was like a centerpiece. Three huge, black metal rings were affixed to a central, circular platform of midnight black metal about twenty feet across. Light didn't reflect off of this metal, it seemed to fall into it somehow. This curious device seemed somehow...heavier, more _there_ than everything else around it. It also struck a cold bolt of fear that shocked Watts' system.

He made himself relax, taking in the rest of the environment. The room itself was kind of like a coliseum, with the curious device in the middle and lowest portion of the room. Various workstations and all manner of scanning gear were built up around the gateway, each level higher than the last. On the highest level of all, where they stood currently, were about thirty soldiers in black armor. They looked intimidating.

"Yo, Doctor Duffy! We on schedule?!" Kaplan called, his voice echoing across the chamber. The general chatter going on slowly died off for a few seconds. One of the men in a white lab coat standing further down, on the first riser, turned to face him.

"Yes, Sergeant Kaplan, we're on schedule. The device is powering up now. If you would be so good as to come down here for scanning, we can begin."

"Roger that, doc!"

Kaplan set off down a case of metal stairs, towards the device. Watts and the others silently followed.

He couldn't stop staring at it.

One thing was for sure. He didn't know how or why, but he _knew_ that the device was alien. Human beings did not build this. They came to stand on a metal platform, like a giant pressure plate, on the first raised ring.

"Assemble on the platform, Marines," Kaplan snapped.

Watts did as he was asked, more and more questions slowly filling his brain. It felt like it might burst soon. And standing this close to the strange, ringed thing was beginning to freak him out. As they stood there on the plate, a soft hum filled the air. After a few seconds, the doctor who'd spoken earlier, Duffy, spoke up again.

"All right, you're clear. Looks like you got the new guy in finally." He turned to face a pair of men in blue jumpsuits. "Power it up."

They both nodded and set to work, moving their hands slowly but surely across a huge workstation they stood behind.

All at once, everything changed.

Watts swallowed as a low hum filled the air. It was much more powerful than before, and deeper too, like a bass rumble. He could feel it in his bones. It was almost like a...growl. It made him sick to his stomach and made his fight or flight instinct kick in hard.

" _Steady,"_ a voice murmured in his ear. He looked around, paranoid suddenly, but then locked eyes with Fletcher. He realized she'd opened up a private comm channel between their suits. _"It sucks the first time, but you can get through it."_

"Thanks," Watts replied softly.

She nodded to him and he turned his attention back to the device. The rings were beginning to move. They were picking up speed. Darkness began to spill into the room, as though living shadows crept from every crack and crevice. The lights hummed and dimmed slightly, some of them flickered uncertainly. The rings were spinning faster now and even as he watched they began to spin so fast that they began dark, metallic blurs.

Something was growing at the core of the rings.

It was dark and shapeless and very difficult to see.

" _Don't look directly at it,"_ Fletcher warned quietly.

But it was hard to look away. His head began to hurt, a throbbing, cold ache that slowly began to consume his brain. Some part of him realized, at once, that she was right, he _had_ to look away. With great difficulty, Watts closed his eyes. The pain receded. As it did, suddenly, there was a great pulse that made everything in the room shake.

Watts opened his eyes.

The rings had stopped moving, all of them lined up now, and there was a flat disc of perfect blackness within the center-most ring.

"All right, let's go!" Kaplan snapped. He'd lost some of his bravado.

It took a second, but Watts forced his feet to start moving with the others. Some of the light had returned to the room and the shadows didn't seem quite so deep, but he realized that they were actually going to walk into that thing.

What was it?

A portal?

A portal to _where_?

As he stepped up to the liquid darkness, he realized he was going to find out.


	2. EPISODE 00: In Hell

Reality twisted.

Existence bent, warped and smeared.

Somewhere, Watts heard screaming, a discordant swirl of damned souls that bled slowly into some kind of stuttering, electronic feedback.

A cold wind shrieked through him, flash-freezing his soul.

Red and orange and black swirled before his eyes, slowly coalescing into images...into faces. Faces not of this universe, not human.

Pure evil.

And then everything seemed to snap. Like a soap bubble popping, he found himself standing on a rocky surface.

Watts cried out, stumbling, falling to one knee, as his whole body seemed to twist and writhe in a million different directions. What felt like cold electricity whispered across his skin, sending millions of pinpricks stabbing into his flesh.

"Little warning would have been nice!" he snapped, struggling to keep from vomiting.

"You're fine, Corporal. Suck it up," Kaplan replied from somewhere nearby.

It took him a few seconds, but the man's words helped ground him back to his own body. He couldn't remember all the times he'd been told to suck it up or get the fuck over it by a superior. And usually they were right.

It's not like you had a lot of choice in his line of work. Either you sucked it up or you died. Or, worse, someone else died.

Watts got back to his feet, clenching his fists. He quickly scanned his environment, then wished he hadn't. He spied eight armored figures, men and women transformed into faceless green statues wielding weapons. To his immediate right was a rock wall with an opening near the middle, to his left, however, was something vastly different.

They were standing atop a small plateau that was set several hundred meters up the side of a mountainous cliff sheer. Beyond the plateau was an immense landscape that went on for untold miles. The landscape was…

It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Most of it was made of an immense plate of black rock that slowly gave way to what seemed to be a desert wasteland. There were jagged, broken mountain ranges, making up a kind of backdrop to this environment. Dotting the landscape were curious constructions, structures that must be truly immense. One, to the far right, was what looked like an ancient fortress, built like a layered cake, the flat gray exterior dotted with windows. Closer to his position was what seemed like an immense coliseum. Presiding over all of this, to the far left, was a titanic black tower that struck pure fear into the deeper parts of his heart and soul.

But what truly terrified him was both the fact that rivers of what appeared to be blood cut through this landscape and the fact that all of this was beneath a bloodred, constantly shifting sky. It was like he was looking into a nightmare.

"Where are we?" Watts heard himself whisper.

"Less you know, happier we'll all be, now come on!" Kaplan snapped.

He began leading them through the opening in the cliff. Watts made himself follow. He had a job to do, orders to follow, and he intended to do so. But this was so jarring that questions kept popping up at a seemingly exponential rate.

Namely, where the hell were they!?

He didn't like that this place reminded him of...well, of Hell.

And that transition, that portal...he shuddered at the memory. How long had these people been doing it daily? How long was he going to be here? What would he be expected to do here? And where the fuck was _here_!?

The opening led to a natural alcove about five feet across. It lasted only about a dozen feet before it opened up into a larger area. Cliff sheers shot skywards all around them, creating a boxed in area that held a small human outpost of some kind. All he could see ahead of him was a wall bracketed by watchtowers, manned by other Space Marines.

Watts and the others walked up to the wall, standing before a gate big enough to drive a truck through.

"Hades Squad reporting in!" he called.

"Roger that, Hades Squad."

Watts glanced up. Someone was standing on the wall now, directly above their position. "Letting you in now."

The gate opened up.

The squad walked through it and it slid shut behind them. For some reason, seeing a collection of clearly human structures was deeply reassuring. It was a small outpost, just four structures within the walls, one in each corner. The rocky ground had been covered by an even coating of metal plates. The only problem, really, was that he could look up and still see that seething, crimson sky. He made a note not to look up.

"Stay here," Kaplan said as they reached the middle of the open area. He walked forward into one of the buildings.

Watts studied the others. For the most part, they almost appeared at ease. That seemed insane, but, then again, he'd seen soldiers get used to all kinds of crazy shit. It was kind of in the job description. How long had they been coming here? What was the UAC _doing_ here? Again, he couldn't help but wonder where _here_ was.

A moment later, Kaplan returned. When he did, as if acting on some unseen signal, every soldier who wasn't a part of their squad began to head for the exit. Shift change, he realized. As they made for the exit, Kaplan walked back up to Hades Squad.

"All right boys and girls, listen up. Davis, Bryant, Wong and Morris, you're with me on cartography duty. Fletcher, Watts, Rogers and Berry, you've got guard duty back here. Get to it, Marines!"

Watts was directed to one of the four watchtowers that made up the corners of the base. He walked over to it, let his shotgun hang by its sling as he hustled up the ladder. He felt bulky in the envirosuit but knew he'd get used to it eventually. As he got up into the watchtower, he managed to get a better view of the surrounding area. Not that there was much else to see. The gray rock sheers on all sides of them extended well above the base, about a hundred feet straight up, showing only the red sky that was mostly blotted out by the roof of the watchtower. But he could also see beyond the metal walls of the outpost now.

There were three other openings in the cliff sheers with natural alcoves beyond them, snaking away, out of sight. After a few minutes, he watched Kaplan lead the other half of Hades Squad out through one of these openings.

They disappeared from sight.

Several minutes passed in silence until he heard the soft click of someone connecting to his communications suite.

" _Hey, Watts, how you holding up?"_

It was Fletcher. He glanced around briefly. Rogers and Berry were on the ground, apparently talking with a few men in white envirosuits. Fletcher stood up on another watchtower, on the other side of the base.

"I'm doing okay," he replied. Damn she had a sexy voice.

" _I imagine you've got a lot of questions and despite how freaky this place looks, not a lot actually happens here. I'll answer what I can. Though obviously this stays between us, you know, as much as it can stay between us."_

"Okay, here's my first question: where the fuck are we?"

" _I'm not sure. If the scientists know, they aren't saying, but I get the feeling not even they are sure. Best guess based on rumor and what I've seen so far is another dimension."_

"Jeez...all right, what happened to the other guy I'm replacing? Kaplan's answer felt like a dodge."

" _Technically, it was true. Cloud_ did _get transferred to Gehenna Squad, the guys we just relieved. What he didn't say was that the guy he replaced killed himself two days ago."_

"I see..." He considered his next question, and he also wondered why she was being so forthcoming. No one else really seemed to be. "What do we actually do here?"

" _We'll probably stand guard most of the time. The only mix up so far has been mapping assignments. The scientists are having us scout and scan the region. There's a whole network of valleys and alcoves cut into these rocks. I think they've got drones farther on, down towards those buildings,"_ Fletcher explained.

"Any ideas on what they are?"

" _Dunno. Creepy though. They almost look human. Almost. Maybe we're in some kind of alternate Earth, the distant future or something?"_

"Wonderful thought..." he muttered. "Have you encountered any locals?"

" _No. Nada. Nothing. Though I'd be lying if I said I felt alone here. This place doesn't feel so much abandoned as...well, as if everyone's hiding. Watching us from afar."_

"Great. How long are we going to be here?"

" _They've got four squads, so they rotate us on six hour shifts. They used to have three squads but the stress of being here was getting to be a bit much. I've seen a couple guys lose it here. And that guy Cloud replaced wasn't the first suicide."_

"How long have you been coming here? How long has the UAC been coming here?"

" _I've been coming here for about three weeks now. Kaplan let slip that he's been coming here for a month and a half, and that he wasn't the first one. I'm not entirely sure how long the UAC has been here, but I wouldn't say too long. I mean, I don't think years. We'd have more built if they were here for years...unless this is just one of many bases. I don't know, it's hard to say."_

"Fair enough. I've just got one more question for now."

" _What's that?"_

"Why are you being so helpful?...not that I'm complaining."

Fletcher offered a short laugh. _"You're cute and I was going to ask you if you wanted to have sex tonight,"_ she replied.

"Uh...wow."

" _So do you? Cause I could really use some. It's a major stress release."_

"Yeah. That sounds great."

" _Perfect. Your place or mine?"_

"Mine is good."

" _I'll see you there after we back and we both have showers. These suits are supposed to have environmental controls but we always end up sweating bad inside them."_

Watts continued looking out over the hellish environment, feeling, if anything, more dislocated than he had before.

* * *

Watts stared up at the blank, metal ceiling above him.

Fletcher had been right, sex was a really good way to relieve stress.

After a surprisingly boring six hours, another squad had showed up to relieve them in much the same way they had shown up to relieve the other squad. Kaplan had gathered them up and led them back through the portal, which snapped into existence on the plateau in an entirely disturbing manner. Going back through a second time had been almost as jarring as the first. Once they'd gotten back and returned their armor and gear to the armory, he'd glanced at Fletcher, who'd given him a sly grin, and then they'd split off.

He'd hurried back to his apartment for a shower.

Out of armor, she looked better than he'd imagined. She was a little on the short side, but she had this awesome, toned body, short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. And she was pretty great at sex. He still wasn't sure why'd she'd chosen him.

Right now, he was thinking about getting up and getting something to eat. He had the rest of the day free. Fletcher was on her side beside him, studying her PDA. "One other thing I should warn you about," she said suddenly.

"What?" he asked, slightly startled.

He'd been thinking about the other place. The place he'd have to go back to tomorrow.

"You'll have nightmares. You'll probably want to start taking a drug. I can't remember the name of it, something long and unnecessarily complicated, but almost all of us are on it. We call it Insomnium. It helps smooth out your sleep, basically. We can head to the infirmary after we hit the mess. Which, I gotta admit, I want to do soon. I'm starving."

"Same," he replied. "But I need another shower first."

"Me too." She set aside her PDA and got up out of bed suddenly. Standing there naked and awe-inspiring before him, she asked, "wanna join me?"

Watts got up to join her.


	3. EPISODE 00: Not Alone

He was in Hell.

Watts slowly opened his eyes to a world of stone and metal and the flickering light of naked flames. Where was he? What had happened?

How had he gotten here?

Trying to put the pieces together, Watts surmised that he'd been strung up, hanging by his wrists from a ceiling. Everything about this strange place surrounding him was pervasive, assaulting all of his senses. He was in some kind of chamber, the walls made of ugly green brick supported and outline by rusty steel girders. Directly ahead of him, he could see a sort of metal grille made of black iron. It was difficult to tell what lay behind it. The floor was made of the same ugly green brick and was splashed with red-brown stains.

Blood.

Old blood.

The air reeked of a thousand awful odors. He could smell slowly rotting meat that had been left out into the sun for a few days, he smelled blood and roadkill and vomit and urine and shit, all of it mixed together and leaving him gagging.

It was so thick on the air he could _taste_ it.

Looking down, Watts suddenly realized he'd been stripped naked. It was uncomfortably warm in the chamber and he was already sweating.

He tested the bonds, old metal wrist binders that held his arms together, hanging from a chain. Although it looked old and worn, it seemed fairly strong. Fear was strong within him. Distantly, he could hear screaming.

It never seemed to stop.

Somewhere behind him, there was the sound of a huge door creaking open, the squeal of hinges painful in its clarity. He tried to look over his shoulder, to see, but he couldn't. He was somehow prevented.

Something snuffled and snorted, an altogether animal sound that reached down into the deepest, basest parts of his soul and awoke something primal. Terror turned his veins to ice. Heavy, meaty footfalls began waddling closer to him.

It was getting closer.

Closer.

Something sliced into his back and he screamed.

* * *

Watts gasped awake.

He sat straight up, looking around his darkened, cramped apartment. His heart thundered in his chest as he swept the entire area with his gaze, trying to determine if he was alone or not. The apartment seemed clear, but he could hardly see in the darkness of the bathroom and the closet. Swallowing his fear, reminding himself that he was a Marine for Christ's sake, he got up, marched over to the wall and slapped the light button. He screwed up his eyes against the sudden invasion of brilliant white light.

He stepped into his closet. Nothing.

He stepped into his bathroom. Nothing there, either.

As he returned to his bedroom, his eyes fell to his bed and he realized that he truly was alone. Fletcher was gone.

His alarm suddenly blared to life.

"Shit!" he snapped, his heart reawakening with a vengeance, threatening to crack open his ribcage and break out of his chest.

Stalking over to his nightstand, he hit the kill button and stood there blinking several times in the sudden silence, trying to get his mind in order. It was harder than normal, but being a soldier meant being quick on your feet. It was oh six hundred, and he had to grab a shower and breakfast before reporting to Hades Squad.

As he moved to gather a fresh uniform and prepared to shave and shower, he thought about yesterday. After sex and another shower, he and Fletcher had pretty much spent the day together. They'd swung by the infirmary and he'd picked up the Insomnium, (she was right, it had some weird long name he'd never remember), but he'd never taken them, he realized. The slim white bottle was still sitting near his sink.

He'd have to remember to rectify that tonight.

They said to take one about an hour before bed.

Watts got into the shower and began to wash up and shave. After the infirmary, they'd gone to grab food at the mess. He was in luck, it was tacos and enchiladas, and they were actually pretty nice. They'd taken their meals back to his room and chatted. Fletcher had grown up in Florida, though she'd had to leave with the others when the ocean started overtaking the state. They'd transplanted to New Mexico. She'd signed up with the Marines from there, but she'd apparently made the mistake of being a hot woman.

A superior hit on her, tried to fuck her, but she wasn't into it.

He wasn't into her not being into him, so she broke his nose, his arm and dislocated a shoulder. She'd been sent up to Mars for her troubles. But she wasn't an idiot, and non-idiots were apparently in short supply this far from Earth, so she'd eventually wound up in Hades Squad. He learned all this over their meal yesterday and shared some about himself, even his own embarrassing situation, which she thought was funny.

Then they'd had sex again. Twice.

They'd watched a movie in between, and had gone to sleep after the second time. But, sometime during the night, she must have left.

He missed her.

Brushes with the opposite sex were rare things since leaving Earth. He'd had a pair of one night stands with two female Marines back on Mars City and a slightly more extended relationship with a beautiful brunette technician that had lasted two months before he'd gotten rotated up. He missed her, too. But such was life nowadays.

He felt lucky just to have these experiences.

Watts finished his shower, killed the water and dried off.

It was time for another day of work.

* * *

The routine of Hades Squad was already becoming just that: routine.

Breakfast was biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon. He ate it fast, spying a few of the others from Hades Squad around, but not Fletcher. He wondered if she wouldn't meet his gaze now, wouldn't talk to him. He thought they'd had a great time together yesterday, and not just the sex, he'd connected with her.

But sometimes it happened.

He felt relief when he went to the armory and saw her. As he passed her to get to his own gear, she looked directly at him and smiled. Watts smiled back. It was a warm smile. He got to his locker and grabbed his gear.

Once it was pulled on, he and the others marched out of the armory, led by Kaplan all the way through to the Phobos Anomaly.

The trip was a blur.

Watts kept thinking about the other place, and his nightmare. It had been so...real. It left him feeling disturbed and dislocated. Shell-shocked. Before he knew it, he was standing before the immense black portal.

Reluctantly, he followed Hades Squad back into the other place.

* * *

Watts shook off the effects of the transition as he walked through the crevice with the others, heading towards what Kaplan called Base Camp.

This time, as they approached the gate, it took a moment before it opened. Watts could immediately tell that something was wrong. He wasn't sure how, attributing it to that shadowy sixth sense he just called his instincts. Sure enough, when the gate finally did open, Watts spied a good dozen men and women gathered in the area: Gehenna Squad and several personnel in white or blue envirosuits.

Kaplan led the squad into the compound.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Two of our men are missing," another soldier, a woman with **SGT. Green** imprinted on her suit, replied. "About thirty minutes ago. We can't raise them on the comms and I've been wanting to hold down the fort here until you arrived for backup."

"Why didn't you send a call through to Command Control?" Kaplan asked.

She looked startled. "We did. They received the call and said they'd send you double-time."

"What the...they didn't say a word," Kaplan muttered. He shook his head. "All right. I'll stay here and hold the fort. Watts! Bryant! Go with Green and her squad, help them find the missing troopers," he snapped.

Both of them snapped off a crisp, "Yes, Sergeant!"

Watts swallowed his fear. There were fellow soldiers in trouble and he needed to be on the ball. He and Bryant followed Green and four of her men back out through another gate. They approached one of the openings.

"We've been mapping out this area for a while now," Green explained as she led the way. "Since our shift change was approaching, I decided to take most of the squad back. One of our beacons that we use to help map the area was malfunctioning and the UAC pitches a bitch about them, so I left two of my men to fix it. We picked up a brief transmission from one of them, but it was too garbled to make anything out. That's when we called Command Control."

Silence descended as they continued making their way through the winding, tight crevices. The narrow space made Watts nervous. He found himself habitually looking up at the cliff sheers high overhead and regretting it each time because he was given a fresh, all-to-clear glimpse of that roiling crimson sky.

They walked for fifteen minutes through the natural alcoves.

Green held up her fist suddenly and everyone froze. Up ahead, past the others, Watts could just make out that the alcove opened up into a larger space. Green made quick hand gestures and two of the other four Marines that had come with them moved past her, into the opening, shotguns at ready. Their movements were tight and rigid.

They must have found something.

Once the Marines gave the all-clear, the others moved into the opening. It wasn't too large of an open area, maybe half a dozen meters across, and two more tunnels in the cliff sheers burrowed away from them.

What held everyone's attention was the huge splash of blood on the ground, soaking the ugly gray rocks…

And the severed arm.

It was still holding a pistol and came complete with green envirosuit armor.

Green opened up her comms. "Murphy, Wilson, do you copy? Over," she asked, her voice hard and tight, the strain beginning to show.

There was a pause that lasted just long enough for her to begin to repeat her inquiry. Then a sharp buzz of static slammed down through the frequency that made them all jerk slightly. A garbled transmission came through. Watts listened closely, his heart hammering in his chest, but couldn't make out any of it. The only thing that came through was that it was a male human voice, and whoever he was, he sounded terrified out of his mind.

"Murphy, say again! Over!"

This time, there was nothing.

"Fuck!" Green snapped. She quickly doled out orders, sending her four men down one alcove and taking Watts and Bryant with her down the other.

The pressure only continued to build as they plunged into the next rock tunnel. A severed arm lying in a pool of blood was no small matter. They were officially in a combat zone, they had to be, what other option was there? Obviously the guy didn't tear off his own arm. Maybe they were finally going to meet the inhabitants of this hellish wasteland. Watts still refused to believe that they were alone here, not with the feeling of being watched omnipresent since the second he stepped foot into this surrealistic nightmare of a world.

They made another discovery a few minutes later.

Again, Green raised her fist and both Watts and Bryant froze. She made quick hand gestures and again they moved quickly, carefully and quietly forward.

Ahead of them was another opening and Watts caught sight of a shadow, moving sluggishly. Whatever it was, it at least resembled a human being and was just out of sight. They came to the edge of the opening, paused, then moved in.

Relief flooded through Watts as he spied a familiar suit of green armor. But that relief was short-lived. The suit was covered in blood.

"Identify yourself," Green said, her shotgun trained on the figure.

Slowly, whoever it was turned around. Watts felt his pulse quicken again. Something was wrong here. As the figure finished turning, Watts looked into his faceplate. The man inside the suit was pale, his eyes almost vacant, the thousand-yard stare of a shell-shocked individual. His sidearm was still in his grasp, dangling by his hip.

"Drop it, Murphy," she said.

The man remained stationary, simply staring at them.

"Murphy, drop your sidearm now, that is a direct order," Green said firmly.

Slowly, the man named Murphy looked down at his sidearm, as if just now realizing that he had it. He looked back up at Green and the others, and some of the cloudy confusion in his gaze seemed to go away.

He dropped the pistol.

Green lowered her shotgun. "What the hell happened, Murphy?"

He looked at the three of them for a long time.

Then, finally, he said, "It took him, Sarge. It took him away. He's all gone."

* * *

Watts made his way through the chromed corridors of Command Control, towards his apartment block.

The day hadn't gotten any better after they'd found Murphy.

He and Bryant had escorted the dazed Marine back to base camp while Green and her squad pulled a double-shift and spent the next four hours looking for the missing man. Eventually, they came back, exhausted and demoralized.

They couldn't find anything.

Fletcher and Davis had escorted Murphy back through the portal and dropped him off for the medics to clean up and try to get anything out of him. The current working theory was that he'd snapped, killed Wilson and dropped his body over the side of a cliff or into a chasm. But that didn't add up for several reasons.

First, the severed arm. Murphy would have a pretty hard time tearing an arm off, let alone an arm encased in metal armor.

Second, there were spent shell casings from both a shotgun and a Raptor SMG. Murphy had had the shotgun, Wilson the SMG. If Murphy had attacked Wilson, then Watts thought it was pretty unlikely that Wilson hadn't shot the man at least once, and Murphy and his armor had been in pristine condition.

Well, physically, anyway.

But beyond and below that was the fact that it just didn't feel right. He, and several others, were convinced some _thing_ had attacked them.

He felt certain that the Brass didn't want to admit that, either to the lower ranks or to themselves. So they locked Murphy up.

Watts reached his apartment and stepped inside. He just wanted to shower off the day and have sex with Fletcher again and relax. He still had a good seven or so hours before it was time for sleep. He shed his uniform, turned on the shower and got inside. Standing there for a long while in the water, Watts found himself wondering something.

Was this top secret project good, or evil?


	4. EPISODE 00: The Beginning of the End

Watts gasped awake, sitting straight up in his bed.

"What is it?" Fletcher asked from somewhere nearby. "What's wrong?"

He gasped again and snapped his gaze right and down. She was propped up on one elbow, looking up at him, then around the surrounding environment.

"...nightmare," he managed as he realized that he was fine. "Sorry."

She reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him back down. Reluctantly, he laid down, and she moved against him beneath the blankets. "It's okay," she said, wrapping an arm around his chest and holding him close. "I understand. I get them, too. You've been taking your Insomnium, right?"

"Yeah," he replied, his pulse dropping back down to something more manageable.

"Do you remember the nightmare?"

"...no, I don't," he murmured.

"I usually don't remember them now, either."

They laid there in silence for a few minutes more. He didn't remember the nightmare, only the emotions that it had left him with. Chief among them being stark, yammering terror that jettisoned all other thoughts.

Watts finally looked over at his clock. Only a few minutes before his alarm went off. He reached over and killed it, then laid back and stared at the ceiling. The drugs seemed to be helping, because already he was beginning to feel better. Or maybe it was Fletcher. He glanced over at her. She'd stayed with him all through the night.

"Why did you leave, the night before last?" he asked suddenly. He'd meant to ask her but kept forgetting all of yesterday.

"Sorry about that," she replied. "I kind of...I don't know, really. Panicked, I guess? I know I came on strong and confident but it's actually been a little while since I've been with anyone, even in a one-night-stand capacity. I thought...I didn't know what I was thinking. Sorry."

"It's fine, I'm just glad you came back. You're really awesome."

She laughed. "What a ringing endorsement." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Come on, we need to get up, brush our teeth, shower, all that crap. And since we missed out on it yesterday, I'm totally willing to have wake-up sex with you."

Watts grinned. "You've just been upgraded from awesome to excellent."

* * *

"Hurry up, okay?" Fletcher asked.

"I will," Watts promised.

He slipped into the infirmary. After he'd heard a couple of Marines talking about Murphy being locked up in a nearby infirmary, instead of the brig, he knew he had to take the chance. Because he just _had_ to know.

There was no one around.

Quickly moving between some examination tables, he opened a door at the back of the room and went inside. Here was a corridor and alongside it were patient rooms. A couple of them were made of tough material to hold more unruly patients. There was no one around here, either, no guards or doctors.

Watts thought it was strange, but he'd seen an odd trend lately in Command Control. Everyone was getting busier. Too much was happening. There'd been a couple of rumors of disappearing personnel. Not from teams going into the other world, but here in the base. And there were also rumors of people snapping, going crazy. And then there were all the power outages that had the technical staff overworked and frustrated.

So when he found Murphy, locked up in a patient room, it was just the two of them.

"Murphy," Watts whispered, looking around again. "Murphy, what happened with you and Wilson?" he asked.

The guy looked terrible, but more in control of himself than when they'd first found him. His eyes were bloodshot and darkish shadows lay beneath each. He was pale and gaunt. He walked up to the glass, staring into Watts' eyes.

"It took him," he whispered.

" _What_ took him, Murphy? What was it? What did it look like?" he asked. Murphy shook his head, his eyes becoming unfocused. Recalling his first time coming to the other world and how Kaplan had dealt with him, Watts decided to try and reach him on a different level. He squared his shoulders and stared hard into the man's eyes.

"Report, Marine!" he snapped.

Murphy jolted and looked back at Watts. That seemed to get his attention. "It was humanoid," he whispered harshly, "skin like leather. Big, six four, maybe six five. Covered in these bony spikes. Huge mouth. And those eyes...red eyes...it took him..."

After that, Murphy would say no more.

Watts didn't blame him, because he didn't want to hear any more.

Swallowing his fear, or trying to, he wished the man good luck, turned and left.

* * *

" _Hades Squad, report to Armory Eight immediately. Repeat, Hades Squad, report to Armory Eight immediately."_

Watts looked up at the intercom with a mixture of fear and frustration, then he looked back down at Fletcher, who had the same look. Behind her, across the room, he spied Davis, who locked eyes with him. His gaze revealed a similar mix of emotions. Something had gone wrong. Watts then looked down at the tray of breakfast foods in his hands. He and Fletcher had just gotten their meals and were heading to sit down.

"Let's go," Fletcher said with an irritated sigh.

A couple other people got up as well. They all converged at the dirty tray line, dropped off their meals and marched out the door. As they began making their way through Command Control, they were joined by the other members of their squad, everyone but Kaplan. Watts couldn't help but feel a growing, icy fear worming its way through his intestines. He kept imagining that _thing_ Murphy had described.

Was the guy insane?

Or had he been driven insane by what he'd seen?

They reached the armory and found Kaplan already suiting up.

"Get the lead out, Marines!" he snapped. "Eggheads wants us there ASAP."

A string of 'Yes, Sergeant!'s sounded off and the group split up. They managed to get into their suits, grab their gear and be out into the corridor in five minutes. Watts felt his pulse picking up as they got into the tram, which was put at a higher speed than normal. The dead gray surface of Phobos flashed past.

Overhead, Mars loomed, enormous and red and ominous.

No one spoke on the ride over. Watts thought about asking Kaplan if he knew what was going on, but realized that the man probably didn't. If he did, he likely would have divulged that to the troops. Although he'd kept quiet about certain things before, this was different. This felt like a combat situation, and you wanted your soldiers to know the threat beforehand if at all possible. Otherwise, you tended to end up with more dead than was necessary.

The tram slid to a halt into the airlock and was cycled through.

As they got out, Watts noticed that there were a lot more Z-Sec soldiers around and they all looked tense. Definitely not a good sign. They made their way into the anomaly room. The place was bustling with activity.

"What's the word?" Kaplan asked their handler as he led Hades Squad down the stairway towards the Phobos Anomaly.

The man seemed distracted and he was talking with someone over a headset. He quickly wrapped up the conversation and turned his attention to them. "Nothing major," he said, though it felt like a lie, "we've lost communications with Gehenna Squad and Base Camp, but we're pretty sure that it's some kind of equipment malfunction."

"I see," Kaplan replied. He didn't sound satisfied with that answer.

"Fire it up!" their handler called.

Watts watched, feeling that same sense of unease, laced with dread and foreboding this time, as the Anomaly went through its warm up procedure. He glanced at Fletcher, who looked right back at him. He saw his own concern mirrored in her gaze.

"All right, let's go. Stay sharp," Kaplan said through their group comms channel.

They walked through the portal.

* * *

Watts snapped into existence.

"This is Sergeant Kaplan to Sergeant Green, please respond immediately, over," Kaplan said.

Silence was his only answer.

"Shit," Kaplan muttered. "Form up! Guns at ready!"

Watts brought his shotgun to bear. It was probably nothing, he tried to tell himself. Just an equipment malfunction or some kind of interference. This was another dimension after all, or, well, it probably was. Who knew what kind of things could screw with radio signals? But he couldn't make himself believe it.

Something was gravely wrong here.

They moved slowly but steadily through the crevice that connected the plateau to Base Camp. Watts strained his ears against the silence, trying to detect anything that shouldn't be there, but all he could hear were the others and his own thundering heartbeat. They kept walking until they reached the opening.

"Oh fuck," Kaplan whispered, his professionalism slipping.

Watts didn't blame the man. The front gate they'd passed through just yesterday had been forced open and periodically shot sprays of golden sparks into the air. Kaplan seemed to get hold of himself once more and made quick hand gestures to the squad, indicating who should go where. Two of the Marines broke left, two broke right and the rest followed him cautiously in through the broken gate. Watts kept his shotgun ready to fire.

It only got worse once they were inside.

Base Camp had been shredded. There were deep gouges in several of the walls, what looked like claw marks, and there was fresh blood everywhere. Spent shell casings, too, hundreds of them. But no bodies.

"Any contacts?" Kaplan asked, his voice harsh and strained.

Everyone reported back negative.

"Fuck," he snapped. "Bryant, Davis, Berry, get up on the watchtowers and make sure nothing's sneaking up on us. Everyone else, with me."

Kaplan led them into one of the structures, the largest one, which turned out to be a combination security center and communications shack. The place was a wreck: pools and sprays of blood, broken monitors, smashed furniture. Kaplan ignored it all.

"Wong, get on the comms, link us with Command Control."

The primary tech nodded, moved over to the comms console, which was still relatively intact, and set to work.

Several minutes passed in tense, forbidding silence.

"Something's blocking the signal," Wong said finally. "I can't get through."

"All right, I remember that in an emergency, Base Camp is supposed to have a signal booster. Where is it?" Kaplan asked.

"Hold on," Wong replied. He turned and moved across the room to a pile of crates stacked in one of the corners. "It's in one of these."

"Then let's get opening."

Kaplan, Watts and the others spent the next several minutes prying open the crates. Watts could feel the tension ratcheting up inside of him. They had to get back, get Command Control to re-open the portal and let them through, because clearly something horrific had gone on here and they were going to need a shitload more soldiers to deal with it.

"Here it is," Wong said, straightening up, holding a small, triangular device of black metal. He checked it over, then powered it on. "It's functional, but the closer we get to where the portal naturally opens up, the better."

"All right, head back there. Watts, go with him. The rest of us will hold down the fort," Kaplan said.

"Yes, Sergeant," Watts replied, tossing one more worried glance at Fletcher before following Wong back out of the room.

They made their way out of the base and through the narrow crevice once more. They moved as quickly as they could. Watts could sense that Wong wanted to get the hell out of here just as much as he did. They reached the plateau and as soon as they did, Wong knelt and began setting up the device. As he did, suddenly, a tremendous roar cut through the air. It wasn't _just_ a roar though, it was a roar amplified a million times, a noise that broke the sound barrier, a noise that was like one planet crashing into another.

It sounded like Armageddon.

It shook the entire area and Watts thought it would burst his eardrums. He screamed, but the sound was utterly lost in the malevolent storm of this inhuman roar that engulfed the entire region. He clapped his hands uselessly over his helmet and fell to his knees, unable to do anything else until, finally, the roar began to fade.

His ears ringing, eyes watering, hearing slowly returning, Watts stumbled to his feet. He found himself staring out over the huge vista that the plateau overlooked. He saw the awful buildings, the ugly formations, the rivers of blood…

And, amongst all that, like a colony of ants on the move, he saw dark, shifting figures. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Even more.

He couldn't stop staring.

Behind him, he heard screaming, and gunfire.

And inhuman roaring.

The end was here.


	5. EPISODE 01: Mars City Inbound

**EPISODE ONE  
** _–KNEE-DEEP IN THE DEAD–_

* * *

 **PART ONE  
** _–OMINOUS INTONES–_

* * *

Mars looked like a real bastard of a planet.

Jack Ward had been given a view of the planet that had been slowly growing over the past two hours. It was starting to make him sick to his stomach, though he couldn't really figure out why. It was probably, he thought as he turned his view away from the window and inboard for the hundredth time, because this was his reward for doing the right thing. He gazed over the crowded, smelly cabin yet again and saw the same collection of sad sacks stuffed into the ship with him like sardines. There were fifteen of the poor bastards in there, himself included, and they were all Marines. Or that's what they were supposed to be, anyway.

He was going to Mars, and he knew what that meant.

He'd been sacrificed on the alter of big business, sacrificed to the great god in the neon sky: the Union Aerospace Corporation.

They all had.

For very different reasons, of course. Jack thought back over the last month and almost immediately turned away from it. What he'd experienced only filled him with disgust, and a harrowing kind of hopelessness. He began to look back out the window, they were actually going down through the outermost layers of Mars' atmosphere now, but instead he stopped and accidentally locked eyes with the kid sitting across from him.

"Almost there, man," he said, grinning. It was a nervous grin, the kind Jack had seen slapped on the pasty, pale faces of dozens, maybe hundreds, of kids too young to know what the fuck they were getting into.

"Yep," Jack replied.

He'd been stuck on this shuttle for almost two days now and holy shit was it getting old. He'd spent ten years in the United Marine Corps and it had taught him a lot of things. Patience was definitely one of those things, but Jesus Christ, even he had his limits. He was itching to get out of this seat, out of this shuttle and do something. Fucking _anything_. All around him, the shuttle began to tremble as it started the final descent towards the surface of Mars. Jack put his head against the headrest and closed his eyes.

He just wanted to shut off.

No thoughts, no emotions, just nothing.

Unfortunately, being a human being that actually gave a shit about things, namely his fellow man, that just wasn't really an option.

He kept his eyes closed as they continued to descend.

* * *

Their ship settled on square of stainless steel that had been scrubbed and pitted by the bone-dry windstorms that regularly ravaged Mars. After settling on the support struts and turning the ship off, they'd been issued droning orders by a dead, electronic voice recorded who knew how long ago and shoved through who knew how many filters. Don't do this, don't do that, put on the pressure suits. They were all issued bland green pressure suits, no doubt built by the lowest bidder, and Jack took no comfort in the fact that they were all that stood between him and a hard, painful death in an atmosphere he couldn't breathe.

He and the kid, Jenkins, couldn't remember his first name, had talked a lot on the way there. Well, Jenkins had talked, Jack had listened and said as little as possible. It wasn't that he didn't like the kid, (okay, he was a little annoying), it was just that he wasn't in a talking mood, and he'd known too many like Jenkins, seen too many like him dead with limbs blown off or holes in their faces with their brains leaking out.

The only real quantum of solace he took from his present situation was that there should be basically no chance of anything like that happening up here on Mars. Shit, it wasn't like there were terrorists or insurgents or whatever the fuck the PR department was calling them these days way out here. No one had the funding to launch a full frontal attack on the UAC Mars Facility. Just a lot of boring shit up here, lots of patrolling and guard duty and not a whole lot else. Though...Jack frowned as he lined up with the others at the airlock. If that was true, then why did he keep coming across requests for more Marines in the Space Division?

The Space Division was basically the UAC's own private army, the governments of the world didn't have the time or resources to head out into space anymore, they were too busy fighting increasingly desperate wars with everyone who wasn't part of the United Nations...and that seemed to change by the week. Things like water, fuel, food...they were all getting kind of scarce, especially with goddamn eleven billion people all over the planet. So they fell all over themselves to cut deals with the UAC, who _did_ have the cash flow to head out into the solar system and harvest brand new forms of energy and other resources.

Jack couldn't help but feel they were all selling their souls to the UAC.

So why were they constantly hungry for new meat? He knew they were expanding, all goddamned commercials and infomercials and propaganda campaigns and all other crap about new research facilities they were building out on Jupiter's moons and a space station over Venus and, in about ten or twenty years, mining operations on Saturn's moons and research outposts around Neptune and on Pluto. But they weren't expanding _that_ rapidly...maybe they were just hedging their bets? Gathering as much manpower as possible for…

For what?

What were they preparing for?

It was his turn to go through the airlock. He got in and the door snapped closed behind him. Several clanging noises sounded and then there was a powerful hissing as the pressure inside the airlock was matched with exterior conditions, and, probably, atmosphere from outside was sucked in as oxygen was sucked out, preserving as much of it as possible. Oxygen was the most precious resource when you were anywhere but Earth. The noises grew farther and farther away, then ceased altogether. The outer door slid open.

A crimson world awaited his gaze.

Despite himself, despite everything he'd gone through, despite the horror of monotony he'd endured getting here, he was kind of stunned by the alien beauty of the place. Slowly, he stepped down the few metal stairs, his pressure boots clanging dully, looking around. They were marooned on a pitted, sooty, pockmarked steel square that glinted dully in the dim sunlight, surrounded by a sea of bloodred sand. Overhead, he could see an ugly yellow-brown sky that reminded him of melted butterscotch, broken by dark, distant mountain ranges.

The effect passed and left him feeling hollowed out, alone and a little cold. Jack picked out Jenkins' boyish face among the eight others out here so far and moved slowly over to him, trying to give the impression that he happened to be drifting that way as opposed to intentionally going there. He came to stand by him.

"So...what'd you do?" Jenkins asked.

"What do you mean?" Jack replied, though he knew exactly what he meant.

"Everyone gets shipped out here because they're failures or because they made a mistake. And you don't seem like a failure."

"Thanks. I think. I disobeyed orders."

"Whoa, really? Why?"

Jack was quiet for a moment, letting himself remember it. Not all of it, but the broad strokes. "I was over in Keferistan, taking out the latest batch of insurgents that had cropped up over there. We had intel that they were using this old apartment building as a base, I was ordered to get to the high ground and mortar those fuckers back to the stone age. My squad got up on a hill, scoped the situation out and...my spotter noticed some civilians in the building. I asked for someone to confirm the situation, cause I wasn't going to blast a bunch of civilians to hell. My CO, some trumped-up jackass with more medals than experience, was screaming at me to just blast the fucking place. I didn't. Took a squad into the building. No insurgents, only civilians hiding out. Our intel was bad."

"So...they sent you _here?_ " Jenkins asked, incredulous.

"Yeah. My CO has a daddy that's a Senator and an uncle that's a four star General. He raised a stink, some other superiors felt that this was the best compromise. Off the record, I was told I just had to do a rotation for a year out here, then I could get back to Earth."

"Well...I mean, at least there's that," Jenkins muttered. "Gee, that makes me sound like a fucking jackass by comparison."

"What'd you do?" Jack asked. He didn't add on the part where he wasn't sure if he even wanted to go back.

He laughed nervously and shrugged. "I was at a base over in Iraq. Got piss drunk one night. Got stupid. Set a box of flash-bangs off and burned down building..."

"Wow," Jack replied.

"Yeah..."

Well, that made him laugh, on the inside at least.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" He looked over. A man was now among them in a blue pressure suit. Their pilot, he realized. "I've got orders from Sergeant Blackmore and you all have your first official assignment!" He walked over to one side of the ship and hit a button. A pair of huge panels began to unfold, revealing a cargo bay within. Jack heard the hum of a motor behind him, turned and saw a pair of flatbed trucks coming his way.

"Get the cargo from the ship onto the trucks!"

Jack looked into the cargo bays at the polished, gleaming silver crates, all of them stamped with the UAC logo.

He sighed softly.

* * *

The loneliness was back, so was the hopelessness, but this time it had a harsh new edge to it: despair. Jack looked out over the landscape as he was driven along, having hitched a ride on the back of one of the trucks with the others who didn't fit up in the cabin. Stupid, because if he fell off it would probably be easy to shatter his visor or get a rip in a suit, and then what would he do? But he found that he didn't quite care.

Being here like this, it felt like...a death sentence. Like exile. It was a horror that he had never faced before: failure from which there seemed to be no escape. It was like he'd been tried, found guilty, condemned and killed...only he was still alive. Maybe he was dead. Maybe this was Hell, or Purgatory. It was sure close enough to what might pass for it.

"Everybody off!" the pilot called as the trucks rumbled to a halt.

Jack turned and looked at the base. Mars City. It loomed over them, made of the same pitted stainless steel material as the landing pad, intercut with airlocks and windows. The road they were taking in terminated before a huge airlock that no doubt led into the garage bays and motorpools where more bored or stupid Space Marines were waiting to unload the cargo. Space Marines. He was a Space Marine now.

What a joke.

Christ, all the way up to Sergeant, ten years in the military and he was a goddamned Space Marine. Busted back down to Private, like salt in the wound. He got off as the truck came to a complete halt and fell in line with the others. The pilot pointed them towards a more regular sized airlock up ahead and told them someone would be waiting inside for them. They moved up, single-file, and went into the airlock. Someone must have been running it because it it slid open and a flat voice informed them to come inside three at time.

Jack, Jenkins and a female Marine he'd caught eyes with a couple times on the way out went inside. They were cycled through after some kind of blazing neon blue light briefly filled the airlock bay, a scan no doubt. On the other side was a receiving bay. Lockers lined both sides of the room and a frowning, buff man with a shaved head holding a PDA was waiting for them. He studied his PDA for a moment longer, then looked up.

"Pressure suits off, in the bin," he said in a listless, droning voice, pointing at a big, wheeled laundry bin. "Then through the door, end of the hall, through the next door and wait for Sergeant Blackmore," he added.

The three began to comply.

"What about our stuff?" Jenkins asked.

"You'll get it later," the buff Marine replied, sounding irritated.

Jenkins got the message and shut up. They stripped back down to their basic fatigues and were just leaving when the next batch came in and the man repeated his litany. They came into a chromed corridor where the UAC logo was stamped at regular, precise intervals every couple of feet. He imagined he was going to become extremely familiar with that logo: two pale yellow overlapping circles with an elongated dark tan triangle in the middle of it, inside of a dark tan square with pale yellow lettering beneath it reading UAC.

It unsettled him, sent an uncomfortable chill tinged with fear through him.

The three of them reached the door at the end of the hallway and as they approached it, it slid open, up into the ceiling, with a strange whooshing sound. Beyond was a large, open area where a great deal was going on. Jack, Jenkins and the nameless Marine stood in an open space beyond the doorway, seemingly out of the way of the general foot traffic. Jack studied the area while he waited for all the others to file in.

The peripheral of the room was busy. He spied a couple of techs squatting down over what looked like a little gun-drone, sparks spitting from their tools as they worked on it. Several more men and women were scattered around the room, on guard duty. Another pair of men sat behind a desk, looking bored. A pair of techs had a panel off in the far corner and were dealing with whatever machinery was hidden behind it.

Occasionally, the overhead lights would dim and come back.

While he waited, Jack found his eyes drifting over to the other Marine. The one he wished he'd been sitting next to instead. He didn't know her name, but when he'd first seen her, there had been a kind of instant attraction. It was more than lust, he was familiar enough with it to know that much. Not love, he didn't believe in love at first sight, it was a crap idea, but there was definitely something there and part of him was telling himself how stupid it was to even be thinking about this. But then another part quite rationally pointed out: well, what the fuck else did he have to look forward to anymore? A relationship, even one of casual sex, would help take his mind off of how absolutely fucked up his life had become lately.

She was beautiful in a rough kind of way.

She had a thin tan that would fade probably pretty soon, since none of them would be getting any sun for quite a while. Her face was narrow, kind of angular, her brunette hair short, just long enough to be pulled into a tiny ponytail, which it was. She looked...competent, and maybe rough around the edges, and her green eyes were sharp, full of that no-nonsense, no-bullshit focus that all good soldiers had.

And she looked really fucking good in her uniform.

She suddenly looked over at him, like she could feel his eyes on her, and she probably could. He knew that women tended to have better peripheral vision than men. She locked eyes with him and damn if her gaze wasn't intense. He saw something there, but what? Anger? No, not anger, something else. No, it was the kind of look he saw in the faces of soldiers getting ready to take on a challenge, and looking forward to it.

Well what the hell did _that_ mean?

"Attention!"

By then, all of the Marines from the transport had gathered in a loose formation in front of the airlock bay. A door across from them had opened and now a great bear of a man filled it, standing ramrod straight, decked out in combat armor and uniform, all polished and pressed within an inch of its life. He was big, bald and very well-built, and was already sporting that dead pale pallor that indicated he'd been up here for quite a while, away from the sun.

"Single file facing me!" he snapped.

As Jack stepped to, falling in and standing rigidly at attention, his body reacting almost automatically to the command, he noticed that everyone else in the room stood more sharply at attention and all conversations came to a dead stop. The newly christened Space Marines fell in to a single file that almost ran the width of the room. His hands clasped tightly behind his back, this new man, their new CO no doubt, marched into the room, frowning intensely, scrutinizing them all. As he approached, Jack suddenly found himself wondering what this man had done to deserve getting exiled to Mars City.

Probably not the best first topic of conversation.

"Soldiers!" he snapped, moving to one end of the line and slowly working his way down it as he spoke. He stopped and stared into the eyes of each man and woman there, as if measuring them. "My name is Sergeant Blackmore. You are all now Privates in the Space Marines! I don't know what kind of bullshit you might have heard on the way up here, but we do not run a shoddy operation here on Mars, or on Phobos, or Deimos, or anywhere else in this system! I expect and demand excellence. I expect and demand no mistakes. We are in a dangerous environment, soldiers! No mistakes! Mistakes, nobody goes home!"

With this apocalyptic pronouncement, he finished his long, measured walk and moved to stand in front of them, arms still behind his back, back still ramrod straight.

"You all have forty five minutes to get your gear, find your dormitories and settle in, then you are to report for your first day on the job. PDAs will be waiting for you in your rooms. Do not lose them, do not loan them out, do not fuck with them. They are crucial to security here in Mars City and expensive to replace and repair, and make no mistake, that _will_ come out of your pay. Now start going up to the desk here and these men will give you your room numbers. Take a moment to thank the UAC that you will be sharing a room only with one individual instead of fifty. Remember, forty five minutes and I expect every last one of you to be on time!"

With that, he turned and left the room.

What a great start to his life and career here among the stars.

Jack joined the others as he headed up to the desk.

* * *

His roommate was Jenkins.

Because, of course, why not?

He didn't actually hate the kid, or even bear him any ill will, he was just...annoying. They'd been assigned their room and given directions. He'd caught a glance from the beautiful woman without a name, (to him at least), and she looked sorry for him. After navigating the complex of corridors that made up the dormitories for the Marines, he and Jenkins found their room. It was longer than it was wide and divided pretty much perfectly down the middle. Standing at the head of the room, in the open doorway, you would see mirror images to your left and right. The furniture started with blank metal desks that held a powered down PDA, then a dresser with four drawers and finally a single-wide bed, made up, neat and pressed.

Then, at the other end of the room, another doorway that led into the bathroom. Their bags were on their beds.

"I call shower!" Jenkins said, making a beeline for the bathroom, snagging his bag on the way in and closing the door behind him.

Jack reached out and slowly closed their front door, feeling the weight of everything that had happened so far coming down on him.

Suddenly, he wasn't entirely sure he had the will to endure this latest development in his life.


	6. EPISODE 01: First Day on the Job

Jack walked through the brilliantly-lit, chromed corridors of Mars City, his head feeling like it was twisting and shifting.

Jenkins had, mercifully, been quick with his shower, and Jack had had enough time for a very quick washing down. He would have liked to have enjoyed a half-hour long shower after being stuck on that fucking transport for two days, but he was taking what he could get now. While he'd been waiting, he'd looked through his PDA. It didn't have much. There was a generic introduction video, _Welcome To Mars City_ , that he'd stopped watching only a minute in. There was also a slightly less generic video from the guy who was apparently in charge of the military outfit on Mars, Master Sergeant Kelly.

He intended to watch them through, simply because he was an information junkie. More information tended to mean it was easier to stay alive. Not that he was actually planning on fighting for his life up here. Well, not in the traditional sense. He might have to fight to save his sanity. Now, he was walking through the base, heading for his local Space Marine Security Center. As the corridor came to an end and opened into an open area that granted access to other portions of the base, he glanced back over his shoulder.

Jenkins and almost all of the Marines he'd come in with, he realized suddenly, were following him. What the fuck, why? He also noticed they all kind of hesitated when he stopped. Suppressing a sigh, Jack figured it would make sense that, well, _someone_ has to be at the front of a crowd, but there was definitely a kind of deliberateness to it. He found the Security Center they were supposed to report to and cut across the open area, just wanting to get this next part over with. The sooner he was on duty, the better.

As miserable as it was, as painful and humiliating and frustrating as it was to be a fucking Private in the goddamned Space Marines, he was _familiar_ with duty. Even if it was just patrolling or standing guard. The door whooshed open, sliding into the wall instead of the ceiling this time, and he led his crowd of Space Marines into the room beyond. It was a fairly big room. The back of it was flat but the side walls and front created a kind of half-hexagon that was covered in banks of monitors and workstations manned by more Marines.

Sergeant Blackmore was up front, looking over a large screen, facing away from them. Jack could see doors that led to other portions of the Security Center to his left and right. As all of them filtered into the room, (they remembered to form a line this time), Blackmore finished up whatever it was he was doing, spun around on his heel to face them and began crossing the room. He stopped halfway and sized them up.

"Two of you are missing!" he snapped.

There was a long silence.

He shook his head. "Jesus fucking Christ." He reached up and ran his hand down his haggard face. "Okay, your PDAs have been updated with maps, clearances and orders. You're going to be paired off and get to work. Get used to today, because it's going to be representative of the rest of your time here on Mars. Now, your security armor is through there, your weapons are through there," he said, pointing first to his left, then to his right. "You show up here at this time, every day, grab your armor, then grab your sidearm, then get to work. It's real fucking simple people, so don't screw it up. Now get to it!" he snapped.

Jack began to turn and head for the armor suit-up room, but stopped as he felt Blackmore's gaze burning into him. He looked back at the man for a few seconds, then turned and started walking. What was that about? Well, he probably knew all about Jack's reason for getting shoved up here. Probably resented having someone like Jack up here in his collection of burnouts and green-as-grass recruits that made for easy pushovers to someone of a higher rank. Space Marine BS aside, Blackmore knew that he and Jack were basically the same rank.

But Jack wasn't planning on making any waves. He didn't want to fuck this up. The United Marine Corps was all he knew. He was still confused about a lot, and he was disgusted by what had happened, but if he dug down to his core, he knew he wasn't strong enough to walk away from this life on moral grounds.

He just wouldn't know what the hell else to do with his life.

Jack grabbed his bland green security armor, pulling on the bulky chestpiece, finding himself wishing vainly for that deep, electric blue combat armor. _That_ stuff was great. It could stop a goddamned eight gauge fired at point blank. After getting the armor on, he shuffled back out of the armor room, across the Security Center and into the armory itself. He felt like a damned zombie. The armory was a proliferation of shelves, counters, lockers and workbenches. A pair of Marines took up the duty of checking all this gear out.

Jack had to admit, there was a lot of fucking gear.

Besides all the stock stuff like pistols, SMGs and shotguns, he spied several goddamned Widowmaker chainguns and even a freaking Eliminator rocket launcher. What the hell were they planning on doing with a damned rocket launcher in a place like Mars City?! He wanted to at least get his hands on one of those submachine guns, but all they issued him was a hip holster, two magazines of ammo and an unloaded sidearm.

After signing it all out, he sighed, attached to holster to his belt and studied the pistol. It was, at least, a sturdy thing. The DX-12 Enforcer sidearm held twelve .45 caliber rounds and packed a hell of a punch. He looked over the sleek black pistol, then loaded it up, flipped on the safety and holstered it. After pocketing the remaining magazine, he left the armory and the security center, coming back out into the main junction area where the others were gathering. He joined them in pulling out his PDA and checked his orders.

He saw that he was paired with someone named Jennifer Taylor.

Glancing back up, he started scanning the nametags that were embedded in the chestplates. His gaze landed on **PVT. Taylor**. He looked up at the face over the chestplate and found himself staring at the beautiful brunette he'd seen earlier. She was staring back at him, PDA in hand. Okay, maybe everything wasn't total shit.

* * *

He and Jennifer were paired up and put on patrol for the first three and a half hours. After that, they had guard duty/unloading duty in one of the garages.

They were silent for maybe the first five minutes, then Jack finally kicked off the conversation. "So, um...you like Mars City?" he asked.

Jennifer looked over at him. "This is the first thing you've ever said to me and _that's_ what you chose?" she asked.

"I, um, I'm bad at conversation."

She stared at him a moment longer, then she smiled and even laughed a little. "Me too." She looked around at the bland chrome corridor they were walking down. "It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and having to only share with one other person is pretty great. Although...I saw you got paired up with that kid."

Jack nodded. "Yeah. He's not too bad, I guess."

They lapsed into silence for a moment.

"So...I'm guessing you want to know what I'm doing up here," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, I am," he replied.

She sighed. "I'll tell you if you tell me."

"Fair enough." He rehashed the story he'd told Jenkins out there on the landing pad. He wondered how many times he'd have to tell that story. Jennifer listened as they moved slowly along their planned path.

"I'm not so sure I want to tell you my story now," she muttered. "You got shipped here because you did the right thing and pissed off the wrong person. I got shipped here because...I fucked up, plain and simple."

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Jack replied.

She sighed. "I might as well. I haven't…" she paused, sighed again, shook her head, "I haven't told anyone since it happened." She was silent for another minute or so, gathering her thoughts. "Okay. I was a Sergeant and I was in Brazil, taking on the Liberation Force. I'd been down there for six fucking months at that point, dealing with the shit day in, day out...I was in a village, checking out reports of enemy activity with my squad...got a transmission over the radio about some civilians at the other side of the village about the same time we got some sketchy intel about enemy movement...eh, long story short, I broke orders to rescue some civilians. Turns out there were no fucking civilians. Walked into a goddamned ambush, got half my squad killed..."

"I'm sorry," Jack said quietly.

"Yeah, so am I."

They kept patrolling and five minutes of silence passed.

"So, you got anyone waiting for you back home?" Jennifer asked.

"No. Family's dead, all my friends are either dead or gone. You?"

"Mom's still alive but that's about it. And we're not...really on speaking terms. So, you know, not really. I guess that's the blessing of this place. You make friends up here and they aren't going to up and die on you. Well, probably."

"Gift and a curse," Jack muttered. "You really want to be friends with these rejects?"

She snorted. "Good point."

"Although..."

"Although what?"

"I don't know. Just wondering why the UAC keeps having soldiers shipped up here. I mean, there were over a dozen of us on that ship. It's probably nothing."

Jennifer didn't say anything, but she looked contemplative now.

They kept walking.

* * *

The day dragged on.

Jack got to know Jennifer, at least peripherally. Neither of them seemed too willing to let their guard down all that much. Which was about par for the course. But he liked her, and she seemed to like him, and that was nice. It had been a while since he'd connected with someone on anything but an absolutely superficial level.

After the patrol, they were given a break for lunch, then they'd reported to the next part of their job: guard duty and cargo unloading.

Now, they found themselves in a small garage with two other Marines and a UAC technician working on a land rover's engine. They'd been standing around waiting for something, anything to happen, for about forty five minutes now and finally, the two Marines started passing a cigarette back and forth and began asking questions.

"So, you two are new?" one of the Marines, a huge, bulky, muscular man with a buzzed mohawk who bore the nameplate **PFC THOMPSON** on his chest asked.

"Yep," Jack replied.

"You hear any of the scuttlebutt yet?"

"No, actually. You got anything solid? Anything interesting?"

"Well..." Thompson looked briefly uncomfortable. There was a difference between gossiping over juicy rumors and asking for solid intel. "Only rumors."

"Like what?" Jennifer asked.

"Well, like guys going crazy up on Phobos and Deimos. That they're doing all sorts of weird-ass experiments up there. Making monsters. Making zombies. Cutting deals with aliens, exchanging people for technology."

"That's an old one," Jack replied.

"Well...yeah." He paused, then a look of excitement came over his face as he remembered something. "Friend of mine, a tech, was crawling around the ductwork last week, said he saw something at the end of the vent he was in. Something big and red, but it got away before he could get a clear view of it."

"And where is this tech in question?" Jennifer asked.

"He's..." Thompson drifted off, frowning, deep in thought. "I haven't seen him all week, actually. And normally our shifts overlap at least some. Shit, I'll have to ask around."

"Well, I know one thing for sure," the other Marine, his nametag read **PFC Sanders** , said, "a lot of people seem to just disappear. I swear they replace half the staff every month. They all get funneled up to the two moons. And the flow doesn't really seem to slow down. Actually...if anything, it's sped up over the past month."

With that pronouncement, all fell silent in the room. Even the technician had stopped working. Jack looked at them all, hoping to get more out of them, but apparently there was no more. The tech went back to work, Thompson and Sanders went back to their cigarette. Jack started to ask another question, but all of them jerked slightly as the overhead comm clicked on and a flat, toneless voice informed them that a shipment was incoming.

Great.

* * *

It was ten past midnight before they finally left the garage.

It was almost twelve thirty in the morning by the time they'd gotten back to the Security Center, dropped off their armor and weapons, signed out and started heading back to their new home. Jack and Jennifer walked through the starkly lit corridors in relative silence, passing the occasional Marine or technician.

Jack felt lethargy creeping in around the edges. He was a little concerned about the fact that he didn't go to work until four in the afternoon now. He wasn't used to such a late start date. He supposed he could work it, provided he went to bed basically as soon as he got back to his bunk. He hoped Jenkins wasn't the kind to stay up all night.

Finally, they came back to their dormitories. It turned out that Jennifer's was across the hall and only a few doors down.

They both stopped, hesitated, lingered.

No one else was around.

"So..." Jennifer said.

"Yeah?" Jack replied after a moment.

"My roommate works the night shift. You wanna spend the night?"

"Definitely," he replied.

She smiled and moved over to her door. Opening it, she slipped through.

Jack followed her in.


	7. EPISODE 01: Darkening

The next two days passed in bits and pieces.

They were largely long, dull stretches of mindless tedium, punctuated occasionally and randomly by bouts of ominous foreboding.

Jack was on patrol, though this time he was by himself. He made his way down a long, chromed corridor. The lights overhead seemed too bright, or maybe it was just the reflections. As he reached the halfway point in the hallway, he paused, then glanced back over his shoulder. In the whole length of the corridor, he was alone. That made him uncomfortable for some reason. Frowning, he turned back around and resumed his pace, moving a little bit faster. Things had been getting strange and tense around Mars City lately.

After staying the night with Jennifer, they'd gotten up the next morning around eight. He'd been tired but had pulled through, slowly exploring the areas that were open to him in Mars City. It became immediately apparent exactly how much of the base was locked off to as many people as possible. Even as a Marine, (Space Marine), there were huge sections of his map that were simply blacked out, hidden to him.

It was the same for the others, too.

He tried to ignore it, instead focusing on finding the areas of the base that mattered, like the gym, the shooting range, the rec room, and the mess. They were all close enough and easy enough to find, but ignoring the bad vibes he was receiving got harder very fast. For starters, he'd had nightmares the night he stayed with Jennifer, and then he'd had them again last night. He didn't know what they were. When he awoke, they drifted away like smoke in the wind. All he could hold onto were the maelstrom of emotions that made him fight for control.

It was mostly terror.

Utter, mortal terror, unlike any he'd ever felt before.

If it had just been the nightmares, Jack could have passed the unease off. Not easily, but he could have done it.

But no, there was a lot more going on.

Like the fact that everyone seemed to be haggard and overworked. Everyone had bags under their bloodshot eyes. Or the fact that all the techs were doing double duty, and they were even pulling Space Marine techs. He overheard way, _way_ too many conversations about burnouts and blowouts and power failures and equipment failures. Apparently the city had always been plagued by problems like these, but they had started spiking not long after he had arrived. And then there were the infirmaries. He passed by one and happened to glance in through the glass in the door, and had to stop and do a double take.

The infirmary was full.

Some people were sprawled out on examination tables, others were clutching head wounds or bloody hands, others were being prescribed pills.

And it wasn't just one infirmary, it was all of them he passed. They were all either full or close to. Word got around that job accidents and hallucinations and insomnia were also increasing. To make matters somehow worse, he was hearing more and more about problems up on Mars' two moons: Phobos and Deimos. Whatever they were experiencing down on Mars City, it was apparently even tenfold up there.

Jennifer had been put on patrol somewhere else in Mars City today, as several of the Space Marines were either in the infirmary or had called in sick. Some, apparently, were even AWOL. How the hell could you go AWOL on Mars?

It was getting close to his break time and he was looking forward to it. Jack had conditioned himself for endurance, but he hadn't felt at ease or gotten decent sleep since arriving on Mars and it was beginning to take its toll on him. He was beginning to think about investing in some sleeping pills, something he'd hate to do because he didn't rely on anything but himself if he could manage it, and he'd managed it for most of his life.

Well...for the most part.

As Jack reached the end of the corridor, passed through the doorway and came into a junction area, he froze as his radio crackled to life.

" _Ward, Blackmore here. Need you for a special assignment."_

Jack's heart was jackhammering in his chest. He was more wound up than he thought. He swallowed, made himself respond. "What is it, Sergeant?"

" _Report to Hangar Two. You're going up to Phobos to drop off and then bring back some cargo,"_ Blackmore replied.

"I'm on it, Sergeant."

The line stayed open for a few seconds later, as if Blackmore was going to say something more, then abruptly it clicked off.

Jack sighed softly and started heading for Hangar Two.

* * *

The foreboding atmosphere didn't abate as he entered the hangar. If anything, it was worse, palpable on the air. A power failure had caused shadows and gloom to gather in the corners of the vast space within the hangar bay. The Space Marines who patrolled around the edges of the room lurked like malignant tongueless wraiths. For the first time in a long, long while, Jack suddenly found himself aching for a cigarette.

He'd kicked the habit seven years ago and after doing so, hadn't felt a craving since. Not even in the shittiest of shitholes he'd seen combat in all over Earth, not even in the worst firefights or after. But here, now, in a shadowy chromium hangar on Mars, he wanted one so bad he could taste it. He paused as he stepped into the room, a violent shiver rippling through him. Taking a deep breath, Jack fought to control himself. It was difficult, but that control came. He'd had to develop an iron will to survive the hellish battlefields of Earth.

Up ahead, he could see Thompson's immense bulk accompanying a couple other Space Marines as they pushed crates on hover-dollies up the cargo ramp of a transport vessel. It looked like they were almost done. He fell in with them without question, loading up the rest of the mysterious silver crates with the UAC logo tattooed on their side. As soon as they were done, all the personnel except for Thompson left the shuttle.

The cargo ramp began to close.

"Hey Ward," Thompson said.

"Thompson," Jack replied.

He noted that the man looked...a little haunted. His good cheer and bluster seemed diminished. A thought occurred to him.

"Did you ever find your friend?" he asked.

The man slowly shook his head as they walked across the bay to some seats. Both men sat down and strapped in. The ship began to rumble as the engines spooled up and they were brought out of the hangar.

"No. He's listed as MIA. No one can find him," he muttered.

"Jesus...sorry."

"Yeah..."

A moment of silence passed between the two. Jack suppressed a sigh. "Hey man, you got a cig on you, by chance?"

"Uh...yeah, yeah I do. Hold on."

It took him a minute, as he was handicapped both by his thickly muscled arms and stature, and the fact that he was strapped into a the chair, but he managed to fish a crumpled, half-empty pack of Yeheyuans and a simple throwaway lighter. He pulled two out, lit them up and offered one to Jack, who took it gratefully.

As Thompson put away the pack and the light, Jack took a pull on the cigarette and then almost coughed it onto the floor.

"Damn man, you okay?" Thompson asked, grinning.

"Yeah...fucking seven goddamned years down the drain," he muttered. "Quit these fuckers seven years ago."

"Shit...I was gonna ask why go back, but being up here is enough. You aren't the only one. There's a big black market of booze, cigarettes, weed, all sorts of narcotics on Mars City and up on Phobos and Deimos. Though it's a lot more controlled up there. Had a friend of mine who went up to Phobos, guy named Watts. Dunno what he was thinking."

"Is it like a promotion or something, to go up there?" Jack asked. The second puff went down a lot smoother and he only coughed a little.

The real horror of cigarettes was how quickly you fell right back into the fucking habit. In a wretched way, it was like coming home.

"Yeah. I mean, supposed to be anyway. More pay, and you get your own apartment. But there's supposed to be a lot more control up there, a lot more crackdown on stuff. I think it's fine down on Mars City. I mean...well, sort of. You know what I mean."

"Yeah," Jack muttered.

Another moment of silence passed between them. The shuttle was rumbling now. They were leaving the thin atmosphere of Mars, making for Phobos. Jack figured they would be there before too long, maybe ten more minutes.

When Thompson spoke again, some of his old natural playfulness had crept back into his voice. "So, uh...I've been seeing you and Taylor creeping around a lot. You getting in good with her?" he asked.

"No, we're just, you know, friends," Jack lied.

The truth of the matter was they'd gone to bed together that first night and had been making love every chance they got. He wasn't sure how to feel about it. It was great, there was no confusion about how it felt, physically at least. Jennifer was in fantastic shape and clearly no stranger to sex. But there was a kind of desperation to their sex, their sessions were often frantic and furious. He had an idea that they were both trying to fuck their problems and fears away. It made him feel good in the moment, but it didn't really help long-term.

"Uh-huh," Thompson replied, clearly unsatisfied with that answer.

"Have you heard anything else? Any other rumors?" Jack asked, changing the subject. He wasn't one to advertise his sex life, nor was he normally one to hide it. But unless his partner had given him express permission to talk about it, he kept a lid on it. Didn't seem right to kiss and tell without her permission.

"No, nothing new, but I have been hearing a _lot_ more of the same stuff. It's like all anyone talks about now. And more and more people are either getting hurt, disappearing or won't come out of their room. It's...kind of starting to freak me out."

"Has it ever gotten this bad before?" Jack asked.

"No. It's always been kind of funky up here, but never like this. Never this bad."

Both men lapsed back into silence and neither spoke for the rest of the trip.

* * *

Phobos Base didn't really look any different from Mars City, although Jack could only see the hangar area he and Thompson had unloaded the crates into. There were no windows in the bay of the shuttle he was in. He wondered what the facility looked like. It was all going pretty routinely so far, except that the Space Marines up on Phobos seemed more...rigid, more apprehensive and anxious, and worked with an almost painful haste. Jack and Thompson found themselves struggling to keep up as the men and women unloaded the crates they'd upshipped and then load up the cargo they were going to haul back down to Mars City.

When they saw the cargo, that's when things got weird.

They didn't look like crates. They looked like coffins.

And there were a _lot_ of them, almost a hundred in total.

He and Thompson shared an uneasy look as soon as they saw the crates, but had to work quickly to get them all loaded up. As soon as the task was finished, they walked back into the shuttle bay and took a seat. The ship began to rattle as it took off, heading back down to Mars City to offload its brand new cargo.

"We've got to look in one of these," Thompson said after a long moment.

Jack wanted to argue with him, wanted to tell him it was a terrible idea. He didn't want to make waves, hadn't his life gone to shit enough already? But that other part of him, the one that was voracious for knowledge, for new intel, because it wanted to stay alive against all odds, that part was stronger.

And it was what decided him.

"Yep," he replied grimly.

Both men stood up and moved over to the nearest coffin-crate. It _could_ be nothing. It _could_ just be a strangely shaped crate. But there was something just too coffin-like about it, the dimensions were too perfect. Both men spent a moment looking over it and finally found a little keypad. Electronic lock. Well, fuck.

"It could be anything," Thompson muttered.

Suddenly struck by inspiration, Jack reached out and punched the six key three times in a row. There was a small chime and the lid popped open.

"How the hell did you know that?" Thompson asked.

"I...don't know. I just...guessed," Jack muttered.

"Lucky guess, man."

They knew something was wrong even before they got the lid open, because they could smell it. They could smell death. But they didn't know _how_ fucked up the situation was until they got the crate open and unzipped the black bodybag inside.

"Oh _fuck!_ " Thompson moaned, stepping back, covering his mouth.

"Jesus," Jack whispered, staring in shocked awe at the corpse. It looked like someone had taken a fucking can-opener to the guy.

"What happened to him!?"

"It looks like...some kind of animal attack," Jack muttered. "See, look. There, claw marks. Looks like something clawed his stomach open...and then teeth marks on his neck. It ripped his neck out, whatever it was. And his arm is...gone."

"What the fuck could have done this to him, man?"

"I have no idea. A...a bear? I mean, there's animals back on Earth, but why the hell would they be here?"

"God, cover it back up, I'm gonna hurl."

"Okay, okay."

Jack zipped the bodybag back up and resealed the crate. The pair moved back over to their seats, buckled in and lit up two more Yeheyuans.

Again, neither man spoke the rest of the way there.

* * *

Jack lay on his back, naked and sweaty beneath the sheet, with Jennifer, equally nude and slicked with sweat, lying against him, his arm around her shoulders. They were passing a cigarette back and forth. He'd broken down and bought a pack of Yeheyuans from a vending machine after he'd gotten off his shift that day.

"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked. "You seem really distracted."

"I'm sorry. I..." He'd been debating whether or not to tell her, and ultimately decided that it would be wrong not to. "Thompson and I saw something today."

"What?" she asked, her tone becoming flat and serious. He spent the next few minutes relaying the shredded corpse they'd discovered, one of nearly a hundred. When he was done, both of them lay there in silence for a long time.

"I almost wish you hadn't told me that," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry. I almost wish I hadn't found it out," he muttered.

"Almost...but not quite. This is need to know information. Okay, obviously _something_ is going on up there. But what?"

He thought it over, but he didn't have any answers. There could be anything. They could be looking at a single piece of a vast and complex puzzle. He had no idea what was up there on those two moons.

And he hoped he never had to find out.


	8. EPISODE 01: Midnight Distress

It was the middle of the next day and nothing was better.

After spending the night with Jennifer again, they'd both gotten up a little before her roommate was supposed to get back, (Jack still didn't know the policy on fraternizing but figured it was pretty lax like most other policies up here), grabbed a light breakfast and then hit the gym. That first section of the day seemed almost regular. The power surges weren't quite as consistent, the techs and Space Marines populating the hallways and junctions and mess were talking about other things besides all the weird shit going on lately. Well, sort of.

The infirmaries weren't full.

But not long after his shift started, that feeling of unease began again. He wasn't just patrolling corridors today, now his orders stipulated that he had to check out a number of rooms that he passed along the way, most of them storage rooms or maintenance areas. He just had to basically step inside and make sure that 'nothing was out of order', whatever the hell that meant. Of course, he was on his own again today, no partner.

The third room he'd checked out was a small, square thing that housed a stack of crates and a dirty, oily workbench scattered with tools and spare parts. There was no one in the room. That was creepy enough, because it looked like someone had been in the middle of fixing something at the workbench. There was some kind of piece of equipment there that Jack didn't recognize, some complex thing of circuitry and bright chromed metal, and it was partially disassembled. What was worse, however, was what was scrawled on the wall above the workbench in black, oily writing that looked like it had been done with someone's finger.

 **THE END IS NEAR**

The oil had run, giving the words a creepy, melted look.

Jack had called it in and hung out there until a pair of stern looking Corporals showed up to check the room out. And probably clean it up. He'd resumed his patrol, but all of vaguely comfortable feelings he'd been gathering over the past several hours were immediately ejected from his skull and replaced with a slow, cold, creeping horror that he'd been experiencing ever since he'd gotten the word that he was getting upshipped to Mars.

Of course, it had never truly left him, hiding in the background ever since he'd seen that shredded corpse. His mind kept wanting to get away from it.

Jack stepped into a bathroom and swept the room with his gaze. It was a thing of polished white tile and silver divider walls between the urinals and toilet stalls. Jeez, what was it with this place and polished everything? It was like a universe of chromed silver. Well, it certainly gave the place a hi-tech feel, which was probably what the UAC wanted to exude, even when you were taking a dump. Jack moved slowly through the room, seeing that none of the stall doors were closed. He had the place to himself.

He checked out the stalls and a little maintenance closet at the back of the room, finding nothing out of order and began to head back out. That was when his helmet radio crackled to life, causing him to freeze in place and his heart to jump in his chest.

" _Ward, got new orders for you. We've got a scientist that's gone MIA. Last time he was seen, he was heading into Mars City Underground. I've updated your PDA with a map and proper clearance. Get down there, find him and convince him to get upstairs, to the nearest infirmary. Do not hurt him, we believe that he may be having a panic attack,"_ Blackmore said.

"Understood, Sergeant. I'll get right on it."

" _Tell me something, Ward,"_ Blackmore continued as Jack checked his PDA and then started making his way towards the nearest entrance to Mars City Underground. _"I read your file, I know about what happened in Keferistan. Do you regret it?"_

His answer was immediate. "Hell no."

A pause. Then: _"You'd do it again, even if you knew it got you shipped up here?"_

"Hell yes," he replied firmly. What the hell was his career going down in flames worth against the lives of the forty two civilians he'd saved? There wasn't even a question about which one was worth more.

" _I see,"_ Blackmore said after a long moment of silence.

The link clicked off and he was left with nothing but dead air.

Sighing softly, Jack kept going.

* * *

Mars City Underground was almost the opposite of what he saw topside.

Whereas the facilities above ground were all made up of brightly-lit, wipe-clean chrome, the underground was a dark place of steam and flashing lights and dark metal. Technicians in grease-stained jumpsuits lurked in the shadows, either catching a smoke, working on something, talking to each other or just...lurking.

Jack immediately felt uncomfortable as he plunged into the world of dark metal. How the hell was he going to find this guy? He was currently standing in an open area, the peripheral of which was dominated by huge pieces of equipment, all of them sounded strained and overworked. He stopped for a moment, considering the situation. He'd never been down here before...why the hell had Blackmore assigned him to this job?

It didn't matter, he decided, he'd do his job.

Jack was nothing if not adaptable.

He checked out his map of the area, which had been unlocked, no longer blacked out but instead a confusing network of overlapping rooms and corridors. He found himself on the map, then located the nearest security center. The place had a good dozen of the small, circular rooms spread throughout. Orienting himself, Jack selected the second door in the left wall, tucked away in between a big pair of tall, rectangular pieces of technology, covered in flashing lights and trembling slightly as they did whatever it was they were supposed to do.

He walked down a short, too-dark corridor, passed through the next door and came into a smaller transitional room. One corner was taken up by the curved exterior of a security center. Jack walked up to it, looking in past the bulletproof glass at a bored-eyed Space Marine staring into his PDA with his feet kicked up on his workstation.

Jack knocked on the window. "Hey, need some help," he said.

The man jerked in surprise and nearly dropped his PDA. He clumsily got to his feet, his face flushed, frustrated or embarrassed at being caught unaware.

"What do you want?" he replied.

Jack had already brought up the image of the scientist he was hunting down. The picture showed a frowning, pale Japanese man with short black hair and a face lined with worry. His name was Jonathan Ishii.

"I'm looking for this man," Jack replied, putting his PDA up to the glass, screen-first. "He was last seen coming down into the Underground about fifteen minutes ago. I was hoping to use your security system to help me track him."

" _I'll_ use the system to track him," the man grumbled, sitting back down and turning to his workstation. He fired it up and began scanning screens which no doubt connected him to security camera feeds.

A minute passed by, long and uncomfortable.

Abruptly, the man straightened up. "Here he is. He's...in an old decommissioned communications facility. Let me see your PDA, I'll pin his location on your map."

Jack passed his PDA through a little slot in the glass, watched the man work it for a moment, then took it back. He studied the map. The decommissioned communications facility wasn't all that far from here. Perfect. After thanking the man, he turned and set off. Jack had to admit, this wasn't boring. Although he wasn't sure if being down here in this miserable, cramped, dark place was worth not being bored.

One of the things he'd learned the hard way was that boredom became a luxury in the face of the horrors war unleashed.

Jack quickly made his way through the interconnecting tunnels, feeling like a rat in a labyrinth, trying hard not to get lost. He usually had a great sense of direction but this place was almost like it was designed to be confusing. As he navigated the area, he found himself wondering just what in the hell the scientist could be doing in the comms facility. Maybe it was just the place he ended up going to ground in his panic. It was decommissioned, so it should be abandoned. Someone probably forgot to lock it up or something.

But what if something else was going on?

Jack simply couldn't ignore the puzzle pieces that had been falling into his lap over the past few days, each disturbing in their own way. Something was going on in Mars City, and something worse was going on up on Phobos and Deimos. But what? What the hell could it possibly be? They were a giant, multi-trillion dollar, interplanetary megacorporation, the largest one in the history of mankind, so it stood to reason that they were experimenting with...all sorts of things. Especially given the fact that they kept producing breakthroughs in engines, medicine, warfare and pretty much all fields of technology.

So...what were they experimenting with that was having these strange side effects?

Jack realized he was at the comms facility. He found the door closed and locked. Sighing, he waved his PDA over the security pad next to it. The pad turned from red to green and when he tried to open the door this time, it slid slowly into the wall, revealing the room beyond. A man in a white labcoat stood at a large workstation of keyboards and screens ahead and to the left. He had them lit up and was working them furiously.

"Dr. Ishii, I need you to step away from the console right now, please," Jack said, stepping into the room.

The man jerked in surprise, clearly so enthralled in what he was doing that he hadn't heard Jack enter. He began shaking his head and turned back to the console. "Please...no, I need to do this. Do you understand? I _must_ do this..." Ishii replied.

He didn't look good. He was paler than in his photo, his hair was a disheveled mess and he was sweating furiously and chewing on something. Sighing, Jack walked forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Doctor..."

He froze as he saw an image on a screen that had been hidden by Ishii. On the screen was an image of some kind of creature. Something that was covered in red, leathery skin and spikes that looked like bony, white ivory. It stood against a background of strange, green, almost iridescent, brick and had one hand raised. It looked like it was holding fire.

"What the fuck is that?!" Jack asked.

"It's one of the reasons I must alert the authorities," Ishii whispered, feverish with fear. "They're going too far. They're going to-"

"Back away, Private Ward!"

Jack jerked and jumped, the irony of the fact that he had become just as enthralled as Ishii had been and had missed the two huge men that had stepped into the room not lost on him.

"No! Please! Help me!" Ishii cried.

But there was nothing he could do. The two men were the same he'd seen earlier, the two stern-faced Corporals that had arrived to take care of the strange message written in oil. They didn't seem too pleased. They outranked him. The two men stepped forward and grabbed Doctor Ishii. One of them held him while the other shut down the workstation he'd been working at.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us, Doctor," one of the men said.

The other looked at Jack, his eyes flat and hard like flint. "I suggest that you get back to your assigned patrol route immediately."

"Yeah," Jack replied, staring back for a few seconds.

He turned and left the room.

* * *

Jack gasped awake, ripped unceremoniously from the deep sleep he'd been in, as static crackled and a familiar voice filled the air.

" _Taylor, Ward, get your asses up and report to the Security Center ASAP!"_ Sergeant Blackmore snapped.

Jack sat up, blinking rapidly, looking around. Where the fuck was that coming from? Beside him, Jennifer was sitting up as well. He reached over and flicked on a lamp affixed to the bed frame, screwing up his eyes against the sudden brilliant light. For one crazy second, he thought that the man was _in_ the room, but it was clear they were alone.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Jack asked, pulling back the blankets and standing uncertainly. He felt incredibly incoherent and confused, still caught in the deep depths of slumber, trying to kick his way out of it.

"Um...uh...comms panel, wall, next to the door," Jennifer said, clearly in a similar predicament.

Jack looked around and spotted it. He began to head for it, to respond, the light throwing his shadow crazily across the wall in front of him, but he stopped. The line wasn't open anymore and Blackmore wasn't talking.

"Okay, we've got our orders," he said, turning away, towards the bathroom. "He said get to the Security Center. Let's go."

He stepped into the bathroom, flicked on the light and splashed some cold water onto his face. He then took a quick leak and stepped out of the bathroom as Jennifer came into it. He was slowly coming online, moving more on autopilot now more than anything else. His heart was still hammering in his chest and he became dimly aware that he'd been having some kind of nightmare involving that strange, red, spiky thing he'd seen on the image. He'd been puzzling over it all day almost obsessively, going over the incident in his head again and again. He hadn't said anything to anyone yet, because those two Corporals kind of freaked him out.

There was definitely a 'secret police' kind of vibe to them. He didn't want to endanger himself or any of his coworkers by tipping them off that he'd seen something. No, better to let them think he hadn't seen anything, that they'd gotten there in time. Originally, he'd almost discounted the secret police idea as overly paranoid, but then he remembered the shredded corpses, the dozens upon dozens of coffins, the constant rotation of personnel and had realized that it was probably all too easy to make someone disappear up here.

Accidents happened.

So he'd buttoned up about it, for now at least.

He'd been dreaming that he was hanging upside down in a chamber made of that iridescent green stonework, naked and sweating, the blood pooling in his head. That thing had walked in, grinning a wicked grin of pure malice, pure malignant evil, and it had started coming for him, its big, clawed hands outstretched…

And then he'd been woken up.

Fuck, what an awful nightmare.

Jack and Jennifer quickly pulled their uniforms back on. Jack had been smart enough to snag a couple spares and store them over here in Jennifer's dresser. He was grateful for that now as he got into a fresh and crisp set of fatigues. Both of them were dressed and out the door in only a few minutes and they were on the heels of Jenkins, who Jack realized he hadn't actually seen for a little while now. The kid looked shook up.

"What's going on?" he asked, his voice a low whisper.

"No idea," Jack replied.

Farther down the way, another door opened and he saw the immense bulk of Thompson as the man stepped out into the corridor as well. He saw them and waited for them to catch up. "You get the call, too?" he asked.

"Yup...what time is it?" Jack replied, he hadn't had a chance to look.

"Just past three in the morning," Jenkins answered.

Jack was mostly awake by now. He'd only been asleep for two hours. Fuck. Not the best amount of sleep to operate on in an emergency, and this felt like an emergency. As they navigated the corridors, making for the Security Center, he ran Blackmore's message back through his head. He'd known that Jack was in the room with Jennifer...was that bad? Or did the man care? Was he just waiting to use the knowledge at some future point?

Jack dismissed the worry. Right now there wasn't time for that.

The quartet of soldiers found the Security Center and hurried inside, finding another three Space Marines there, as well as Sergeant Blackmore. The man stood at the front of the room, which was only manned by a single other Space Marine, who looked very miserable and overworked. Blackmore was in furious and quiet conversation with someone. Jack tried to pick up what was being said, but all he could make out was the word Phobos.

Not really the best sign.

Jack studied the other three soldiers. He'd seen them around over the past couple of days. The grim-faced black woman who always seem unhappy he recognized as Corporal McGee. He'd seen her around, conducting other Space Marines and technicians. She seemed like the frighteningly competent sort of person. The tall, thin, pale man with a scrim of stubble on his face who looked like a burnout was PFC Peterson. Jack had seen him working on lots of different gear and had found the man crouched before open panels several times over the past few days, digging into the exposed guts of Mars City as he ran down one problem or another.

The final member, PFC Baker, was a hard-faced medic who had a wicked sense of humor. He'd seen her in the rec room a lot and seemed to be one of those women who got hit on a lot and had absolutely no problem shooting them down with a practiced ease. She had lost her good humor though and now stood with the others, frowning, staring at Blackmore. Jack and his lot moved to join the trio. They all crowded together.

"Any idea what's going on?" he asked quietly.

McGee shook her head. "No, Blackmore just called us here. Although I do know that at least thirty personnel have been sent up to Phobos today...and none of them have come back as far as I can tell. Nothing beyond that."

Jack's stomach went cold. "What the fuck are they all doing up there?"

"No idea," McGee whispered.

Abruptly, Blackmore's conversation cut off. He sighed heavily, facing away from them. His head was down, as though gathering his thoughts. Suddenly, he straightened up and turned around. His expression was hard and grim.

"There's an emergency situation up on Phobos," he said, walking swiftly across the room. He didn't bother with pretense, instead walking past them, into the armor room. "Come on, we need to suit up right now."

They followed him in, looks of unease plastered on all their faces. While they pulled on their green pressure suits, Blackmore continued. "At eighteen hundred hours today, Phobos Base sent out a distress call. It was cut off mid-transmission and what they did send didn't really enlighten us as to the nature of their distress. We upshipped a team, got the report that they had landed and then didn't hear back from them. Two hours later we upshipped a second team, and didn't hear back from them either. So they sent up a third team and, you guessed it, when haven't heard back from them as well. So we get to be team number four."

"You're shitting me, right?" Jack replied, causing everyone to look over at him sharply. The others looked back at Blackmore, their expressions expectant, wondering how the Sergeant would react to the statement.

"No, Ward, I'm not," he muttered.

Jack was surprised, and worried. He hadn't meant to let that slip out and had expected a verbal assault by the stern Sergeant, but he'd hardly said anything. Which meant he was distracted, worried or both. Which was definitely a bad sign.

"UAC still thinks the situation can be salvaged up there. I don't know what the hell their plan is if we don't report back..." Blackmore added.

They finished putting on their armor and then quickly crossed over to the armory. Jack's hopes sank even lower as he saw the utterly depleted condition of the armory. There was barely anything left beyond a handful of pistols and some shotguns. They gathered up the gear and distributed it as evenly as they could. What that ultimately amounted to was the fact that Jack only managed to get his hands on a pistol and five magazines.

Great. Sighing, he loaded up the pistol, flipped on the safety and holstered it. He pocketed the four spare magazines.

Fifty bullets and some green security armor was all that stood between him and who the hell knew what up on Phobos.

"Look, I know this is a lot to throw at you, but we don't really have a choice. They've been having some kind of problem down here in Mars City and everyone else is staying put in case...something happens," Blackmore said. "So the mission is as follows: secure the area, determine the nature of the threat and, if necessary eliminate hostiles and evacuate the personnel."

"What 'hostiles'?" Jennifer asked.

"I don't know," Blackwell replied. "Everyone loaded up?" he asked, looking around at them. They all responded affirmatively. "Then let's go."

Jack followed him out of the armory with the others, feeling like a man who was walking towards his own grave.


	9. EPISODE 01: The Calm Before

**PART TWO  
** _–THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS–_

* * *

Jack felt a cold wave of ominous foreboding slither through him as he stepped into the hangar bay with the others. It was chillingly empty, only a single ship remaining. He couldn't stop seeing the image on the console in the decommissioned communications facility, the red thing with the spikes and the leathery skin and the glowing red eyes. Was _that_ what was waiting for them up on the far side of Phobos? There was something about that image, something that reached into his core and triggered a surge of instinctual, primal fear the same way a spider or a snake did with a lot of people. There was something fundamentally _evil_ about it.

The group hurried across the immense, lonely room, heading for the airlock at the back of the troop transport vessel that was powered up, waiting for them. Jack had been on a lot of combat missions, a _lot_ of them, he'd lost count, and there was always a touch of fear there and that pre-battle adrenaline as he amped up for what was ahead of him. He was as afraid to die as the next guy, he supposed, but he'd gotten good at handling his fear and his thoughts as he was dumped yet again into the meat grinder.

But this was different.

Now, he just felt a cold, stark terror. This was the terror he had experienced as a child in the darkness of his ramshackle Missouri home, terrified of what might be lurking beneath his bed or in the midnight blackness of his closet, which didn't have a door. He felt like he was being walked to the gallows. Jack swallowed as he got into the airlock to cycle through, forcing himself to maintain control. He was a goddamned Marine and he'd faced down a decade of hellish warfare all over Earth. What was this shit?

But his bravado wasn't doing him much good now. Much as he tried, he couldn't help but continue to feel that slow, frozen dread.

Once he was cycled through the airlock, he got into the main cabin, which was a tight, compact tin tube with rows of chairs along either side. Hardly any room to maneuver. Sighing, he sat down and strapped himself in. Slowly, the others cycled through and took their seats. Blackmore was the last one in. He walked down the aisle and paused. Jenkins had taken up the seat directly across from Jack. Blackmore looked down at him.

"You're in my seat, Private," he said.

Jenkins stared back at him with a kind of 'deer caught in headlights' look, then he stammered out an apology and quickly began to undo the buckles and straps. Blackmore resumed his walk forward. He poked his head into the cockpit and gave the pilot the all-clear. Jenkins had re-situated himself and Blackmore came in and sat directly across from Jack. As the ship began to rumble with takeoff, Blackmore strapped himself in, then fixed Jack with a hard, flinty stare. Jack stared back at him, unsure of what the man wanted.

"All right, Ward, spill the beans," he said.

Everyone was looking at the two of them now.

"Sergeant?" Jack replied, honestly not knowing what the hell he was talking about.

"If you haven't picked up on it yet, I sent you after Ishii for a reason, Ward. I caught hell for it but I don't think they know why I did it."

"They?" Jack replied.

"UAC Command, the administrators that run that place. Something fishy's been going on for a while now and Ishii is one of their top scientists. He was panicking, heading for that comms station for a good reason, I'm sure. What did he say to you?" he asked.

The cabin was dead silent except for the rumble of the engines. Jack swallowed, looking around at all the others, who stared back at him expectantly.

"I saw something," he replied.

"What, Private? _What_ did you see?" Blackmore pressed.

"Ishii was panicking, said he had to warn the authorities about what was going on. I...there was an image on the screen in front of him. It was of some kind of creature. I don't know what it was but it was _definitely_ not human."

"Describe it," Blackmore replied.

"It was humanoid, maybe six four, six six, it was hard to tell. It had red, leathery skin with white spikes jutting up out of it. Its eyes were red and it had one arm pulled back, like it was getting ready to pitch a baseball. It looked like..." He hesitated.

"Like what?" Thompson pressed, staring at him intently, his eyes wide.

"Like it was holding fire," Jack replied.

Silence in the cabin again.

"Was that all you saw? Did Ishii say anything else?" Blackmore asked finally.

"No...wait. He said, when I asked what that was, he said it was one of the reasons he had to warn the authorities. Then some Corporals showed up and took him away. I don't think they know that I saw anything," he replied.

Blackmore was nodding silently. " _One_ of the reasons," he said softly. "That means," he continued, speaking up to be heard over the engines as they left Mars' thin atmosphere, "that either there are more than one of these creatures or this creature is merely one type of creature."

"That's a big stretch," McGee said. "How do we even know Ishii wasn't a whackjob? What if he just cooked that image up?"

Blackmore shook his head. "No, Corporal, I've...seen some things, heard some things, off the record. It's legit. It's obvious that the UAC is up to no good and it's obvious that they're sending us into a meat grinder up there. We don't exactly have a lot of choice. Now, I believe in all of you. If we keep our wits about us and stay sharp, don't take any chances and keep it tight, we should be able to make it through this. You're all Marines, the best goddamned soldiers in the whole fucking galaxy and it doesn't matter _what's_ up there, cause we're going to kick its ass back into whatever black hole it crawled out of, do you understand me?!" he rumbled.

The response was powerful, from all of them. " _Yes, Sergeant!_ "

It was obvious to Jack that he was just hyping them up, that nothing had actually changed about the situation, but it made him feel better nonetheless. He supposed that was the foundation of confidence and hope: although nothing had changed, you felt better about your ability to handle it. And, in all truth, that really could make all the difference in the world. Jack sighed softly and simply sat back, since it was obvious that he'd offered all he could to the situation. He closed his eyes and again saw the mysterious, evil red thing.

He opened his eyes and didn't try to doze the rest of the trip.

* * *

This time, when they came up to Phobos Base, Jack was given a brief view of the area through the small windows of the craft. From what he could tell, it looked like the base was somewhere between six and ten structures spread out inside of a pair of huge craters right next to each other. Then the view was gone, nothing left but stars and then the broad, crimson curve of Mars, and the troop transport was settling down on the surface of Phobos. As soon as it was down, Blackmore got up out of his seat and moved into the cockpit.

They listened to him as he attempted to raise anyone still left alive.

"This is Sergeant Blackmore from Mars City to Phobos Base. We are responding to your distress call, Phobos Base, what is the nature of your emergency?" He released the button and waited, listening with the rest of them. Jack stared into the cockpit, then looked around the cabin. They all looked sweaty and nervous behind the plate glass of their pressure suits. Back in the cockpit, Blackmore tried his contact mantra once more.

Still nothing.

As he prepared to repeat it a third time, Jack saw the man jerk in surprise as a wash of static burst into the cockpit. Jack felt his heart leap in his chest as he listened intently. The static was ongoing, pouring from the cockpit's speakers in waves, but there was something beneath it. Another sound, buried in the static.

It almost sounded like...screaming.

Or roaring.

Abruptly, it cut off.

"Well, that was enlightening," Blackmore muttered. He turned around. "Everyone, get ready, we're going in. Now, your pressure suits have two hours of oxygen, make sure you activate your oxygen reserve and seal your suits before going out there. Ward, you're staying here. I want you to check out the other ships, see what kind of condition they're in, if anyone is home. Also, uh," he glanced back briefly at the cockpit, "keep an eye on our ship. Make sure nothing happens to it."

"Got it, Sergeant," Jack replied.

That meant keep the pilot from freaking out and leaving them behind. Although there were probably other ships on Phobos and one of them was probably a qualified pilot, there was no reason to risk it.

Jack watched his fellow Space Marines leave the ship, catching eyes with Jennifer. He wanted to say something to her: wish her good luck, thank her for shacking up with him, apologize for holding back the information and explain why he'd done it. But there was no time for any of that. He merely nodded tightly to her and she nodded back. Soon, she was gone through the airlock. Then the others were gone.

Blackmore was the last one out.

"Good luck," Jack said before he left.

"You too," Blackmore replied, his gruff grit momentarily snuffed out. He looked...worried. But the moment passed and he got that hard, flinty look back in his gaze. "Make sure you secure this perimeter ASAP, Private."

"Yes, Sergeant," Jack replied.

Blackmore left. Jack turned around and headed into the cockpit. He looked down at the pilot, who was nervously tending to his controls.

"What's your name?" he asked.

The pilot looked up at him, looking small in his white pressure suit. "Stanmore," he replied. "Stephen Stanmore."

"All right, Stanmore. Keep the ship warm, we might need to leave here in a hurry," Jack said.

Stanmore nodded. "Don't worry, I will."

The man was clearly scared, but was it justified fear...or fear that was riding the edge of panic? It was too hard to tell. Jack merely put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it briefly and then turned around and headed back to the airlock. He cycled through, taking the opportunity to turn his pistol's safety off. Over his helmet-mounted headset, he could hear Blackmore and the others chattering. They were nearing the entrance to the Hangar now.

The outer airlock door opened and he was given a bleak, grim view of gray Phobos.

Jack took a deep breath and tasted the canned air of his suit. He let his breath out slowly, fogging his visor.

Okay, time to get this show on the road.

He took the first step out onto the three-step platform that extended to the ground. Then he took the next step, and the third step.

The final step put his feet onto the gray, ashen surface of Phobos. Here he was, on another body of rock, floating through space. Jack roused himself. He had a job to do and it sure as hell wasn't to sit there and revel in sci-fi splendor. Okay, maybe splendor wasn't really the right word. Dead ahead, maybe ten meters away, was another silver, pitted platform that held another transport ship, identical to his own.

He set off. To his left was the dark bulk of the Phobos Base Hangar, a huge structure that vaguely resembled an elongated pyramid. It was several hundred meters long and on its right side was the big, bulbous shape of the control tower, a good seventy feet up. There were much larger landing pads buffeting the edges of the structure. All of them were empty. Jack returned his attention to the shuttle ahead of him. He realized that his hand had fallen unconsciously to the pistol in his holster. He made himself relax.

As he drew closer, Jack realized that it was _not_ identical to the one he'd just left. There was something marring the inside of the glass canopy covering the cockpit. Something that looked disturbingly like blood. Definitely a bad sign. Now, he did pull out his pistol. Moving carefully around the side of the ship, he came to the back, to the airlock, and felt a chill ripple through him. The airlock had been forced open.

 _Ripped_ open, actually. Hard steel had been ripped open, by...by what?

Jack swallowed and peered cautiously into the ship, stepping up on the first stair. He had a clear view of the whole interior. It wasn't in much better shape, but it was empty. Slowly, he made his way into the ship, his pistol up and ready, held with both hands. He came into the cockpit and found the frozen, shredded, pulpy remains of what must have been the pilot. The controls had been smashed utterly, some occasionally shooting sparks into the dead interior. Jack shuddered violently, suddenly having the feeling of being watched, and spun around. He remained alone in the wrecked shuttle. Sighing, he headed back out.

"Sergeant Blackmore, I've investigated the first shuttle. It's ruined, pilot's dead. Something ripped open the airlock with brute strength."

" _Wonderful. We're finding a lot of the same in the Hangar. Whatever happened here, it was big, ugly and very, very brutal,"_ Blackmore replied.

"I'm going to check out the other two ships, Sergeant."

" _Affirmative."_

Jack made his way up to the next two ships and found basically more of the same. As he checked them out, he listened to Blackmore and the others give out reports. It began to fade into the background as he tried to piece together the growing, bloody mystery he had on his hands out here. As he walked slowly between the ships, the miniscule gravity throwing off his gait and making his stomach roll, he found his gaze continually drifting up to Mars, which hung huge and crimson above him, taking up most of the sky like a gigantic red eye.

As he got down with the second of the three ships, he heard Blackmore report that the team was going to split up, check out the Toxin Refinery and the Nuclear Plant, then converge on Command Control to get some answers. Jack felt colder than ever as he moved towards the third ship. It was obvious that something completely FUBAR had happened up on Phobos, but even with the limited clues he'd gathered so far, he could only come up with very basic ideas. Obviously, they'd been conducting experiments and obviously one of them had blown up in their face. Either by accident or by sabotage...unless he was wrong about that, too.

What if it was some kind of alien invasion?

A virus they had found buried somehow on Phobos?

Something totally different?

The interior of the third ship was just as bloody and brutalized as the others. He hadn't expected to find anything else. Slowly, Jack made his way back outside, standing on the fourth and final landing pad, staring up at the huge, monolithic structure before him. As he was staring at it, he jerked in surprise as his radio burst to life.

" _Ah, Sergeant, I've got movement here..."_ That was Thompson.

" _What is it?"_ Blackmore.

" _I don't...oh shit, there's more of them. Freeze! Identify yourself!"_

Jenkins broke in, his voice trembling. _"Sergeant, I've got movement, too! There's...god, there's a dozen of them! I-oh god, what's wrong with them!?"_ He shrieked, and suddenly gunfire cut across the channel.

" _-too many of them!"_

" _What is that?!"_

" _Shoot it! SHOOT IT! KILL IT!"_

Jack stood there, frozen with stark terror, as the radio became awash with overlapping voices, screaming, hysterically shouted orders from Blackmore, the booms of shotguns going off and the higher popping reports of pistols.

Then, all at once, nothing.

Dead air.

It shocked Jack into action like a bucket of cold water. Turning, he began rushing back towards the ship that still worked. "Sergeant Blackmore, can you hear me!?...Blackmore!?...Jennifer, are you there?! Talk to me!" he screamed.

But there was absolutely nothing on the radio now, just a dead blankness, not even static.

Up ahead, the ship that was still functional was trembling and the engines were flaring white in the blackness.

" _Stanmore, do not leave us here you fucking bastard!_ " Jack shrieked over the radio, not knowing or caring if the man had heard him, panic igniting inside of him. He ran as fast as he could, and managed to make it to the airlock. He smashed the open button and forced himself inside as soon as the door was open enough, then smashed his fist on the cycle button. The seconds slammed by as the atmosphere was pushed into the airlock. His panic was doused though, now he was actually on the shuttle.

He could make Stanmore stop if he had to.

The airlock finally finished its tortuously long cycle and he leaped into the cabin, rushed down its length and burst into the cockpit. Stanmore was furiously working the controls. Jack clapped a hand down hard on the man's shoulder and forcefully spun him around. Stanmore cried out, looking pale and terrified in his white pressure suit.

"Please, don't hurt me!" he screamed.

"Relax!" Jack screamed, then stopped, made himself calm down. "What the fuck are you doing?" he asked.

"I...you heard what happened! I'm trying to get the hell out of here! You're here now, we can go back to Mars City...if I can get the engines working," he replied, his voice high, strained.

"Stanmore, we aren't going anywhere. The squad needs help. I'm _not_ leaving them behind."

"Then _you_ go!" Stanmore moaned. "I'll stay here and-"

"Stanmore, you're coming with me," Jack said flatly. "I obviously can't trust you to stay here and wait for us and it'd be a bad idea anyway, since the other three ships have been ripped open and the pilots all killed. And you said it yourself, something's wrong with the ship."

Stanmore looked up at him, miserable and terrified, trembling. But something in him seemed to shift and he sighed and turned back around, powering down the ship.

"I trust you have a weapon?" Jack asked, straightening up.

"Yeah, they issued me a pistol and two magazines," he mumbled.

"Then get it, load it and let's go. We're going in there and pulling them out. I'm not leaving anyone behind," Jack repeated.

He was terrified, but as he led Stanmore back out through the airlock, (making him go first), Jack felt a cold, hard calm settle over him. He had an objective in mind. It was difficult, maybe impossible, but Jack at least knew what he was doing: moving into unknown, hostile territory, locating his fellow Space Marines and pulling them out of there. It was a goal, it was something to work towards, and that had always been enough for him.

Once they cycled out of the airlock, Jack led Stanmore across the gray plains of Phobos, towards the immense bulk of the Hangar.

"I trust you know how to use that?"

" _Yeah,"_ Stanmore replied, his voice coming shortwave over the radio now, _"I know how to use it."_

"Good. Don't take any chances, don't go off on your own, don't make any more noise than absolutely necessary. I need you to be an asset in there, not a liability."

" _Yeah, I'll get right on that,"_ Stanmore muttered.

Jack stopped and turned to face him. They were halfway across one of the main platforms that was right up against the Hangar, standing in the shadow of the base. "Stanmore, this is serious. As in, life or death serious."

" _I know that! I'm not going to do anything stupid."_

"Good."

Jack turned and resumed his walk. Up ahead, he spied an airlock, probably the same one the team had used.

He tried the radio one more time.

"This is Sergeant...Private Ward to anyone, do you copy?" Still nothing. He sighed softly and led Stanmore up to the airlock.

They stepped inside, the base swallowing them up without compunction.


	10. EPISODE 01: Into the Storm

The airlock went through its hissing cycle as it flooded with atmosphere.

Jack swallowed nervously, holding onto his pistol with both hands now. He made sure for the third time that the safety was off. Behind him, Stanmore was still and silent. Jack looked down at his hands. At least he wasn't trembling anymore. It was pretty fucking unbecoming of a Marine to tremble. But god _damn_ was this a scary situation. Here he was, heading into a completely unknown situation, facing completely unknown hostiles, armed with only a damned pistol and a terrified pilot who he basically had to coerce to be here as his back up.

Pretty high up there in terms of nightmare scenarios.

The airlock let out a clank that made him jerk and the hissing cut off. Jack cleared his mind, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now was the time for focus more than anything else. He stepped up to the opposite end of the small airlock bay.

"Remember what I said," he murmured to Stanmore, glancing back.

The man nodded, his pistol in hand as well. He looked even paler than he had before. Jack turned back around. He looked down at the small control pad set into the door frame. The open button beckoned him.

It was time to face the unknown.

Jack hit the button and brought his hand back, gripping the pistol. The airlock doors split down the middle and slid slowly into their recessed niches within the walls. Slowly, bit by bit, a poorly-lit, metallic corridor was revealed. The metal was a dark grayish color, lit only by a row of naked bulbs studding the ceiling overhead. The place had the feel of a maintenance access tunnel, some kind of behind-the-scenes area, the guts of the base where power and light and oxygen were routed. There was nothing in the stretch of corridor.

It was pretty simple, just about twenty feet of metal hallway, one door at the very end, big enough maybe to push some basic cargo through. This must be some kind of auxiliary access airlock. Jack stepped carefully out of the airlock and felt a chill shudder through him. He waited to see if anything would happen, expecting some kind of reaction, but there was nothing. Around him, the Hangar hummed mutely with power and whispered the quiet respiration of oxygen filtration. He didn't like how dim the lights were, though.

"Come on," he said quietly to Stanmore.

Slowly, he made his way down the corridor, checking for anything. But there was nowhere to hide. Well, that was nice at least. Jack reached the end of the corridor and opened the next door. Another stretch of corridor, but this one had more doors in it. They were all to the left, just two, neither open. Jack began to head towards the first one, but froze as a sound came to him. It sounded like...he wasn't sure. It was too indistinct, but it struck him as an organic sound, a noise a living thing would make. Stanmore tensed behind him.

"Did you hear-" he began.

"Shh!" Jack snapped.

Both men waited, frozen in silence. A few seconds later, the sound repeated. It was still too indistinct to make out, but he thought it might be a human being making the noise. It took a third time for it to be issued for him to determine where it was coming from: a vent to his right, stuck high up into the wall, near the ceiling.

There was something disturbing about the noise, something besides the obvious. After a few seconds, he had it: the sound was being repeated, almost like a recording on loop. As he was standing there, feeling the situation out, he heard it again, closer this time. Yeah, definitely a person. But what were they trying to convey? It didn't sound like pain, or anger, it sounded like...he didn't know _what_ emotion was being displayed.

They'd deal with it later, for right now, he wanted to clear these other two rooms.

"Stay here and watch the doors, let me know immediately if anyone comes out," he said.

"Yeah," Stanmore replied softly. He swallowed nervously and looked around the hallway.

Jack moved up to the first door, reached out and hit the access button. The door slid open, revealing...a maintenance room. Just some back room where technicians worked on equipment. Workbenches, lockers and tables took up the most space along the peripheral of the cramped room. Whatever had happened, it hadn't touched this area. Jack did a double check of the more shadowy areas, where someone or something might conceivably hide, but there was nothing, so he left the room, closing the door behind him.

The second door led to much of the same, though he did find signs that someone had actually been here, in the middle of something. One of the workbenches was scattered with tools and spare parts, and a chair had been knocked over. It looked like a tech had bailed in the middle of a job, because...because why? What had he heard? Seen? What had happened here on Phobos Base? Jack left the room and stepped back into the corridor. As he did, he heard a soft chime from inside of his suit. His pulse spiked. Thinking it might be the radio, he glanced at the very basic wristpad interface and frowned. It was his oxygen.

His suit was warning him that he'd used up a quarter of it. Jeez, had it really been half an hour since he'd stepped outside?

"Turn off your interior oxygen," Jack said, deactivating his own and opening up his vents. "We don't know what kind of situations we might run into, we might need to go for a walk on the surface," he added.

"There's got to be oxygen reserves around here," Stanmore replied as he did the same.

"There doesn't _got_ to be anything around here. Assume nothing, rely on as little as possible," Jack replied.

Stanmore sighed but kept his peace.

As Jack made for the final door, he paused. Now that his vents were open, he could smell something. It was an old, familiar smell he'd become all too acquainted with: blood and death. But there was something beneath it, something putrid that set him on edge. Rot and decay. Meat gone bad. Jack reached the door and opened it. A simple square room awaited his inspection. Nothing in it, just a door to the right.

Jack tried the radio again. "This is Private Ward to Sergeant Blackmore or anyone else that can hear this transmission. Please respond."

Still nothing. Sighing, Jack opened the door, and hesitated. This time, the door led into an immense area, what he quickly realized was the hangar bay itself, or one of them. He swept the area with his gaze and pistol, picking out the usual litter of stuff he'd seen in a hundred hangars. Crates and fold-out tables and chairs, a couple of land rovers and two shuttles. Over to his immediate right was a huge stack of crates that towered over him and a pair of abandoned loaders, one of which had tipped over, spilling its load.

Half a dozen crates were smashed against the floor, most of them broken open, spilling all manner of gear and spare parts across the dirty metal floor. That's where the sound had come from, and even now he could hear it again, much more clearly. It was a groan. A flat, empty groan, sounded like a male, but he still couldn't hear anything in the groan. It didn't sound like pain, it just sounded...flat. Dead. The sound put him even more on edge.

"What _is_ that?" Stanmore whispered.

"Let's find out," Jack replied.

There were a couple feet of space between the edge of the crates and the side of one of the big shuttles. The sound was repeated, and, as they drew closer to the opening, Jack began to hear another sound: what sounded like...eating. Like someone greedily chowing down on a steak. Occasionally there was a sharp, high crack.

The sounds did not inspire confidence.

His mind was feeding him all kinds of awful images and he shut it down. Now was not the time. Jack reached the crates and stepped carefully through, briefly peering back, but his view was blocked by the big, bulky ship.

He stepped around the pile of crates.

For a second, maybe two seconds, relief flooded him. Someone was standing on this side of the crates, facing away from him. Judging by the blue jumpsuit, it was a technician. One of the base personnel. Jack began to open his mouth, to say something, to ask what the fuck was going on here, but then that same sound, that groan, was repeated exactly. And it was coming from the man in front of him. That's when the relief began to fade rapidly. And then, all at once, his mind picked out a bunch of different things.

First, the guy's jumpsuit was torn and bloodied. In fact, it looked like someone had put two rounds through his chest and they'd burst out his back. Then there were his hands, sticking out of his sleeves. They were far, far too pale, like a corpse left in the snow. Then he turned around and everything just slammed into place. The man's eyes were wide, white and empty. No pupils or irises, just white. His mouth was stuffed with teeth, more than there should be, and they were all sharp. Worst of all, blood was smeared around his mouth.

At the same time this was happening, Jack became aware of the fact that there were more people behind this strange new terror. They were crouching on the floor, doing something, but now this technician, this...former human, was coming right towards him and Stanmore. _That_ broke his paralysis. Jack was good at noticing when dangerous people were coming right towards him. He snapped his pistol up.

"Don't move! Identify yourself!" he barked.

The man issued a low moan and raised his arms, reaching for him with hands that were also smeared with blood.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Stanmore cried.

"Stop, _now!_ "

The man kept coming.

All of Jack's instincts were screaming at him to pull the trigger, so he did. He aimed low, putting a round through the man's right thigh. He stopped, stumbled, but then kept going like it was nothing. Jack remembered the two bullet wounds he'd seen through the middle of his back. What the fuck was going on?

"The head! Shoot him in the fucking face!" Stanmore yelled.

Jack's next thought, actually. He raised the muzzle, took aim and fired. The bullet entered the man's forehead, a little left from the center, and ripped away a good section of his skull. The man, (zombie, call it what it is, a fucking zombie, a goddamned _zombie_ ), pitched backwards, a spray of deep red gore erupting into the air and splattering the nearby surroundings with its rotted brain matter and coagulated blood.

As the body slammed back to the deckplates, Jack became immediately aware of three new hostiles. They had been crouched down behind the first zombie, almost totally hidden in the shadows. They were standing now, their hands and mouths smeared with shredded gore, the remains of a corpse beneath them.

The origin of those meaty, snapping sounds he'd heard earlier.

Jack adjusted his aim, training taking over. Three hostiles, unarmed, coming for him at a slow gait. Okay, he could deal with this. He shifted aim a bit more and squeezed the trigger. The pistol barked in his hand and first zombie, another technician, this one tall and thin, took a shot through the mouth. The back of his head blew open like a ripe watermelon. He went down like bricks on Jupiter. He snapped to the right and the second zombie's eye erupted in an explosion of deep red gore. The third zombie, a blonde woman wearing a green fatigues with half her cheek ripped away ended up with a bullet right between the eyes.

As Jack began lowering his pistol, he heard a startled shriek and four quick gunshots. He spun around, seeing another two zombies headed their way, coming out from behind the shuttle. Stupid! Stanmore was going ballistic, hosing them down, wasting shots. He managed to put one of them down, a lucky shot that punched through one's cheek.

"Stop firing!" Jack screamed, leveling his pistol at the next zombie and squeezing the trigger. The bullet went in, the blood splattered out.

"Oh-oh god-I-I just...I just..."

"Stanmore, calm the fuck down," Jack said, looking around quickly. They seemed to have the immediate area to themselves.

"I-I-I, I never sh-shot anyone..."

Jack sighed, turned and placed his hands on Stanmore's shaking shoulders. "Say teacup and saucer," he said.

Stanmore's eyes cleared a little and the haze of panic was replaced by a cold splash of confusion. He stopped looking around and stared at Jack. "Wh-what?"

"Teacup and saucer, say it."

"T-teacup and saucer."

A few seconds passed.

"Feel better?" Jack asked.

"I...uh, yeah," Stanmore muttered. He laughed suddenly. "Where the fuck did you learn that?"

"Read it in a book by Stephen King once," Jack replied.

"I didn't think anyone read him anymore."

"People still read him. Now come on."

Jack turned around and checked his six again. Still nothing there, though he heard a dismal growl somewhere nearby.

"What _are_ these things?" Stanmore whispered, some of his fear returning.

Jack began making his way around the front of the shuttle.

"They're zombies," Jack muttered, surprised that he was able to say it so plainly. Zombies. Zombies weren't real...except that he'd just killed five of them, so...obviously they were real. They had all the classic signs of zombies: smelled like something dead, buried and then dug up three weeks later, groaning, slow, stumbling, eating human flesh. So obviously they were real. Even if they weren't actual horror-movie zombies, but just something similar…

"But that's impossible!" Stanmore hissed.

"Be quiet," Jack replied. Up ahead was the other shuttle. He wanted to clear the hangar first, then move on. They slowly began moving through the area. Given all the insane stuff the UAC had actually put on the market in the past twenty years, Jack had no problem believing that they could produce something like this. So they'd produced some kind of toxin, something that created zombies...Jack felt ice fill his veins.

If it was something airborne...they had opened up their vents. He swallowed, then tried to push the fears away. If he was infected, well then, he was infected. He'd learned to be zen about certain extremely dangerous things in his life. There wasn't a lot he could do about being infected. That was zen...or maybe it was fatalism.

He didn't say any of this to Stanmore, the guy had enough to worry about.

As he finished clearing the hangar bay, more thoughts began to come to him. Why didn't he have a goddamned map of this place?! He was so unprepared for this. Speaking of unprepared...as they approached the exit to the bay, he turned to face Stanmore.

"Stanmore, for Christ's sake, don't throw away bullets like that," he said.

"I'm...sorry. I panicked."

"I know. Don't do it again. Now come on."

Jack opened up the door and looked into what lay beyond. It turned out to be a big corridor. The most immediate thing he noticed was a corpse laid out in the center of the passageway. He could tell right away that it was local personnel, not anyone from the team. How far had they made it before the zombies had gotten them? And...how could the zombies have gotten them? It just didn't make any sense. They were all armed, trained in at least the basics. He knew for a fact that Blackmore, Jennifer and McGee were solid and could take care of themselves. Why hadn't any one of them tried to get back to the ship?

What if they were all dead?

No. Jack wouldn't accept that. They couldn't all be dead. He stepped out into the corridor and took a better look around. No sense in just standing around. The place was huge, more of a tunnel than anything else, with high ceilings and broad enough to drive a truck through. Which was probably what regularly happened, given that this was the nexus point for cargo to be offloaded and uploaded. Dead ahead of him was another hangar, but he wanted information, answers, and they sure weren't going to be in there.

He needed to get to the control tower.

Since the corridor seemed to be clear and Stanmore was okay with letting Jack make all the decisions, he took a moment to orient himself, remembering the structure from the exterior. The tower should be to his far right. He looked down the length of the tunnel dead ahead and saw that was actually cross-sectioned by another huge tunnel about seventy feet away. Okay, that probably was where he needed to go.

He set off.

Stanmore followed. "Where are we going?" he whispered.

"Control tower," Jack replied.

They moved down the length of the corridor, more questions swirling around Jack's head. He pushed them away. No questions for now. He was deep in an unknown, hostile territory and he needed his wits about him if he was going to survive.

Speaking of survival…

Somewhere up ahead, he heard more inhuman growling. As they drew closer, the sound resolved a little more and he could tell it was coming from the right, the way they wanted to go. Jack got up against the wall and edged up to the corner. He first took the opportunity to look ahead him, a little into the left passageway. No zombies there, just some more bodies, pools of blood and shell casings. So far, so good.

He peered cautiously around the corner, into the next tunnel.

There were six zombies waiting for them, milling about, stretched along the length of the tunnel. Two medics, three technicians and a single Space Marine, though no one from the squad. "Watch my back," Jack said, then stepped around the corner.

He took his time, aimed well and fired truth.

There were five shots left in his magazine and each one of them was clean headshot. He had to admit, once you got past the skin-crawling horror, (something he was unhappy to admit he was already doing, what did _that_ say about his mental health?), zombies weren't all that bad. They were slow, stupid, uncoordinated. They didn't fire back or try to duck. As he ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in, he called to Stanmore.

"Come on out, get some target practice in," he said.

Stanmore stepped out. "Why didn't you kill it?" he asked, staring uneasily at the stumbling medic, who was a good thirty feet away, slowly coming towards then, dragging one leg.

"I left it for you. Put it down," Jack replied.

The pilot had already killed one zombie, but that was more out of blind panic and luck than anything else. He needed to actually, intentionally put one down. Swallowing his fear, Stanmore stepped out and stood next to Jack. He aimed and fired. The first shot went wide. Stanmore took aim again and squeezed the trigger one more time. This time, the round took the zombie high and right in its forehead.

Its head snapped back in a plume of deep red gore and it slammed into the floor.

"There you go. How many rounds you got left in that magazine?" Jack asked.

"Um..." Stanmore fumbled with the pistol, pulled the magazine out. "It's spent."

"Then reload. And keep count. Nothing worse than running out of bullets in the middle of a firefight. You usually don't live to regret the mistake," Jack said.

Stanmore nodded, ejected the spent mag and put a new one in.

"It's my last magazine," he said.

Jack passed him one of his own. "Make them count."

Stanmore nodded and accepted the magazine, slipping it into his pocket. Now Jack only had two to spare. As they started walking down the hallway, something was nagging at his brain. A lot of somethings actually, but this one was more apparent. He was missing something...but what? Missing something in a situation like this was a good way to get dead fast. He slowed and scanned the litter of bodies he'd produced.

Zombies, man. Fucking zombies…

His stomach did a slow roll and his last meal threatened to come up. Okay, maybe he wasn't handling it super well. Maybe he was just jettisoning his emotions to stay sane in the moment or maybe he was shell-shocked.

Either way, he felt like a fucking idiot as his eyes fell on the dead Space Marine. Look for more ammo! Why hadn't he thought about that? Sighing, Jack paused and knelt by the dead soldier, feeling more than a little guilty. This was no way to go down, no way for a Marine, Space Marine or no, to end. Really, it was no way for anyone to end. Were they alive?, he wondered as he rifled through the man's pockets.

If so, death would be a release. A mercy.

Unfortunately, the corpse was empty, no spare ammo, no sidearm, not even a combat knife. He took a moment to pat down the other corpses in the area, but it was all the same story. Well, this wasn't good. If _all_ the base personnel were like this, he'd need a shitload more ammo. And something heartier than a freaking pistol. Also, preferably more backup than a pilot with minimal training ready to piss himself.

Jack sighed and pressed on, leading Stanmore to the end of the hallway and slowly in through the set of double doors waiting for them. They were halfway open and apparently stuck. He carefully swept the room beyond but there wasn't anywhere to hide. It was just big tower with stairs wrapped around the interior, ascending to the control room at the top. All the space underneath the stairs on the ground floor was packed solid with crap, there was nowhere to hide. Jack hesitated as his eyes caught on something.

Among all the crap packed in there, he saw a trio of gray, ribbed, forty gallon barrels nestled in the shadows beneath stairs. One of them had sprung a leak, and what was slowly leaking out was a noxious, bright, almost neon green liquid.

"What do you make of that?" Jack muttered, pointing at the barrel.

Stanmore stopped looking worriedly around long enough to study the barrel and frown deeply. "It looks like...toxic waste," he murmured softly.

"Great, another fucking thing I need to worry about."

Jack began making his way up the stairs with Stanmore riding his heels. Now that he was actually here, dealing with this, he kind of regretted taking the guy with him. If he was alone, he could be more in tune with his environment, more aware of something missing or something that wasn't supposed to be there. He could hear Stanmore's breathing and shuffling footsteps and the occasional worried mutter from him. Not exactly a great person to have with you in a deadly environment. But what the hell was his other option?

He couldn't drop the guy off somewhere, he'd just go right back to his ship and try to escape. And maybe he'd succeed this time.

They trudged up the stairs to the top. Jack found himself on a platform that served as an impromptu level. There were three doors. He moved to the first one, opening it up and slowly stepping inside. A small bathroom done up in white tile. Someone had been brutally murdered up here, as evidenced by the chewed up meat that resembled a corpse lying in the center of the room. Jack checked out the stalls but they were empty.

Zombies were more than likely lurking nearby.

He moved into the next door, finding a derelict break room. A few tables and chairs, a kitchen area that had a mini-fridge, a dishwasher and some cabinet space, a couple of old arcade cabinets shoved into one corner. He recognized Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 and a recently resurrected classic, Area 51, since there'd been a weird resurgence of arcade cabinets for the first time in over a hundred years. Turkey Puncher's screen was cracked.

Jack left the room and moved to the final door, beckoning for Stanmore, who had been hanging around the top of the stairwell, looking down, to join him. The doors to the control room itself were closed.

"Open them," Jack whispered, pistol at ready.

Stanmore hit the button and the doors opened up, revealing another abandoned room stuffed with all manner of equipment and terminals and workstations, a hundred screens, most of them dead and black, some with static washing across them, others flickering madly. Not exactly the most distraction-free environment.

Jack took a cautious step into the room as he saw that there was nothing immediately threatening. Mistake. He felt a sudden smashing pain in his left shoulder and let out a small shout about the same time Stanmore let out a warning. Jack backed away several steps, raising his pistol with his right hand, his left one temporarily out of his commission as his whole left arm was numb from the blow. He saw a man in an orange flight control suit, one of the techs that coordinated the ships and shuttles, at least back when he was still alive.

The thing was holding a big, red wrench like it knew how to use it.

Jack aimed and fired twice, putting two big nasty holes in its head, one of them turning its eye into a thick plume of gore and an empty, dark socket. Whatever passed for life fled it and the walking corpse became the regular kind of corpse, slamming to the floor.

"You okay?" Stanmore asked.

"Yeah," Jack muttered, taking a more careful look around the room this time. Stupid. That was really stupid. How many more mistakes was this place going to let him make and get away unscathed? He flexed his arm, well relatively unscathed. He'd be fine, but he was going to have one big fucking bruise now. And damn, that was through the fucking security armor! Those zombies were apparently really fucking heavy hitters.

But that wasn't what was bothering him.

That zombie was using a wrench. It was using a _weapon_. Fifteen minutes ago they were drooling, stumbling morons. What the hell did this mean? Did the guy happen to be holding one when he turned? (However the hell _that_ happened.) Was it just muscle memory? Or something more? Jack filed that away for later and moved into the control room. The center strip of the three outer walls were all glass, giving him a grand view of Phobos Base and the ashen gray surface of the moon itself. What a wonderful view.

"Watch my back," Jack said, moving over to what appeared to be the most intact workstation left in the room.

It was obvious some kind of firefight had gone on, as a lot of the screens were cracked and shell casings littered the floor. No other bodies, though. Not exactly the most comforting sign. It didn't take him long to realize that the main computer network was pretty much fried. He couldn't pull any real useful information out of it, at least not from here. He might have more luck at some kind of main control center.

He switched gears and rolled the chair over to the communications console. Jack fired it up and plugged into it.

"This is Private Ward to Sergeant Blackmore or any other Space Marines or UAC personnel, is _anyone_ receiving this message?"

He waited, listened, and then after several seconds, prepared to try again. All he was getting was the hum of an open channel. However, as he leaned in again, suddenly, there was a surge of static. He jerked back in surprise, then froze as a flat, dead voice spoke.

" _It's dark here. Here, the birds burn."_

Jack felt ice fill his veins. There was something disturbing about that voice, something that reached down and touched a base part of him, an old, primal caveman undermind that reacted instinctively to danger.

Jack made himself respond. "H-hello?" he asked. He realized his hands were trembling slightly. He forced himself to calm down, to get a grip. "Is anyone receiving this message?" But there was nothing after that, not even static.

"What the fuck was _that_ about?" Stanmore asked.

"I don't know. But we need to make a plan," Jack replied, standing up and stepping away from the comms console, instead focusing on the rest of the base.

Phobos Base was spread out before him. He had a great view of the area. Ahead and to the left, he could see a big, flattish green pyramid with a lot of pipes coming off of one side. Farther on, beyond it, a big, green dome with huge yellow windows. Then, to the far right, opposite of those, a big two-tiered structure, split into two sections connected by bridges. Finally, back to the left, beyond the other two structures, he saw two huge, bright-green pod like buildings with tunnels connecting them back to a central, towering structure that was built right through the wall that the two huge craters the base was built in shared.

He could see more structures beyond that, but only vaguely.

"Stanmore, you've been here before, right? What am I looking at?" he asked, calling the other man over to the window.

Stanmore joined him and began pointing the structures out. "I don't know too much, but that green one with all the pipes to the left is the Nuclear Plant. Then the round dome one is the Toxin Refinery. And then that other one to the far right is Command Control. I _think_ that one in the middle is Phobos Labs, but I'm not sure. And I don't know anything beyond that. I just picked this up from chatter I heard over the radio and in the hangars."

"Fine," Jack murmured, going over his memory. "Sergeant Blackmore's plan was to check out the Nuclear Plant and the Toxin Refinery, then converge on Command Control to look for some answers. I don't see any reason to deviate from that plan."

"Except for the fact that it got them all killed," Stanmore mumbled.

"We don't know that they're dead," Jack snapped. "Now focus up."

He already knew how they were going to get there. He could see long, almost-invisible tubes connecting all of the structures. Tram tunnels. A good, quick way to shift personnel and cargo. It would take them straight to it.

As Jack led Stanmore back down the stairwell, a thought occurred to him. Well, a couple did, actually. Namely, he wanted to go back to the hangar bays and check them out. He'd skipped over one and hadn't thought to look for ammo in the other. Plus, he wanted another look at those ships, to see what his options were.

He didn't have time to search every nook and cranny, but he took fifteen minutes to hurry through the two bays, (judging by the size of the first one and the overall size of the building he'd seen from outside, he knew there couldn't be more than one other hangar bay), and checked off the things he wanted to do.

First, he investigated the two ships in the first bay, (there were no ships in the second one), and confirmed that they were in just as bad a shape as the three he'd investigated out on the surface. Which, all at once, he realized how disturbing that was. Back then, when he'd been checking them out, sure they were creepy and mysterious, but everything was. Now that he'd faced down the big bad guys of Phobos Base, his discovery was thrown into a new, harsh light: what the hell were zombies doing out there, smashing up cockpits?

Except that...it _couldn't_ be zombies.

Even with enhanced strength, Jack couldn't imagine any human had the capacity to rip open the airlock doors the way those had been. But even putting aside that question, he found himself wondering _why_ it was done. The zombies were drooling, mindless fools, intent only on, apparently, eating flesh. The destruction of the ships, the total radio blackout, the utter lack of contact with any other survivors...it all reeked of intelligence.

That all made him feel like crap.

What made him feel only marginally better was the fact that he put down enough zombies to have to slap a fresh magazine into his pistol, (Stanmore capped another two), and this time, he managed to scavenge an extra three magazines, one of which he gave to Stanmore. He also didn't find any traces of his missing team. No corpses, no survivors. It felt like a zero sum game. Ultimately, he and Stanmore ended up in a security center attached to the tram bay. Jack recognized the security center the second he saw it and quickly made for it.

Security meant ammo, maybe more guns even.

However, he wasn't prepared for what was actually waiting for him in the security station. He opened the doors and peered inside. There were no zombies, though there was a corpse, sitting askew in a chair at the edge of the room before a huge bank of monitors. Something was wrong. It wasn't just the flickering yellow-red light coming off of the monitors. It was the monitors themselves. They were...no, that wasn't possible.

"What the fuck are we seeing?" Stanmore whispered.

Jack didn't know what to say. For the first time in a long, long while, perhaps his entire military career, he was utterly, totally stumped for an answer. Several of the screens that made up the bank of security monitors were…

Bleeding.

Deep red blood leaked steadily from them, pooling on the control console beneath them. What was worse, several of them showed flaming pentagrams. Pentagrams? What, were they dealing with an outbreak of fucking demons…

Demons.

His mind flashed back to the image of the crimson thing he'd one the screen over Ishii's shoulder. No...that wasn't possible. He simply flat-out refused to believe it. They were _not_ facing demons from Hell.

An old, old phrase from a very old horror movie rose in his mind, unbidden…

 _When there is no more room in Hell, the dead shall walk the earth._

But this wasn't Earth! This was Phobos! And that was all bullshit anyway!

Jack was in the middle of this crisis when, abruptly, all the screens flickered and then went dead. Before either man could react, a message appeared in bleeding, flaming text, taking up the entirety of the screen wall.

 **THE END IS HERE**

Jack jerked back in surprise.

"Oh what the fuck, man?! What the fuck!?" Stanmore cried.

"We're leaving," Jack replied. "Get to the tram, now."

He turned around, half expecting a grinning demon with red skin and horns and a spiky tail waiting for him in the doorway. But there was nothing. Nonetheless, as he hurried back out into the tram bay, he felt cold all over. He and Stanmore moved through the open door and transitioned into another room that had a pair of loading platforms on either side. A sleek, silver tram was waiting for them in one of the bays.

It felt too convenient, but Jack wanted out of the Hangar _now_.

He and Stanmore moved onto the train and cleared it, then Jack settled into the control area and began working the instrumentation panels there. He was no conductor, but he was smart enough to get the tram rolling.

The Nuclear Plant was dead ahead.


	11. EPISODE 01: The Nuclear Plant

"I don't suppose you have even the _slightest_ idea as to what's going on, do you?"

Jack turned and looked back through the open door at Stanmore, who was sitting on one of the benches in the first compartment of the tram. They'd been riding in silence for a good five minutes now, progressing smoothly beneath the glass tube. There wasn't anything to see out there but space and Mars overhead and the dry grayness of Phobos. Jack's mind had been running furiously for the entirety of all those minutes.

"No solid intel," he replied and turned back.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Stanmore groused.

"It means I don't _know_ anything for sure beyond the fact that there are apparently fucking zombies and my team is missing and the radio is dead." Although that wasn't entirely true. He still remembered that flat, dead voice with its cryptic, chilling phrase. In his mind, he could still hear those dry words. What did it _mean_?

What did _any_ of this mean?

"Could it be a toxin? Or a disease? A virus?" Stanmore asked suddenly. He got up and joined Jack in the control area.

Jack sighed. "I don't know, Stanmore. It could be anything. Could be cosmic rays for all we know, or an alien plague. The only intel that matters for the moment is that we can kill them pretty easily. But some intel _I'd_ like to know is: do you have any real training?"

"What? I mean...some," Stanmore muttered.

"Define 'some'," Jack replied.

The pilot sighed. "My uncle used to take me shooting and I was okay at it, and when I signed on to be a pilot for the UAC, they made me take a few courses. Essentially very, very basic military training. How to shoot a gun, load a gun, clear a room..."

"So how come you aren't better at this?"

"I'm not a fucking soldier! And I'm kind of freaking out because we're facing the goddamned walking dead!"

"Fine, but I need you to focus up, Stanmore. Remember the basics. You watch my back, you don't point the gun at anything you don't intend to kill. We go into a room, I cover one side, you cover another. You call out when you see a threat."

"Yeah, all right, fine. I...I got it," he replied, going and sitting back down.

Jack suppressed another sigh and returned his attention to the growing structure ahead. Its huge, flattened pyramid design was kind of throwing him off. He realized, suddenly, why there was such a broad, flat space on the roof: it was a landing pad. He imagined they offloaded hazardous waste there sometimes, stuff that couldn't be taken care of by the Toxin Refinery. Jack realized he was getting distracted.

As they neared, he tried the radio one more time, but all he got was the same flat silence as before. Well, it was better than some other super creepy thing. Maybe there were survivors here, or at least a freaking shotgun. It'd be nice to lay his hands on one of those pump actions and blow open some zombie skulls.

"Get ready, Stanmore, we're almost there," he called back.

The tram pressed on, passing through the final stretch of tube and then sliding into the airlock, which, mercifully, still worked. He waited, listening to the hissing and other telltales of a big airlock doing its duty. He had no idea what would be waiting for him on the other side. Part of his mind told him: more zombies.

But he couldn't stop thinking about that red creature he'd seen.

Abruptly, the airlock sounds died away and the corresponding door opened up into another terminal area. He didn't see anyone or anything waiting for them on the loading platform. Nonetheless, after the tram settled into its position and went into standby mode, he stood and pulled his sidearm from its holster.

"Get ready," he said, walking back into the first car.

Stanmore stood up stiffly and grabbed his own piece. The two of them moved to the doors and Jack took another look around the area. He still didn't see anything, but he didn't like the way the far left portion was unlit. Jack hit the access button and the doors slid open. He stepped out onto the platform and flicked on the small but powerful flashlight built into the muzzle of his pistol. Playing it over the shadowy region, his eyes widened in surprise as he saw a trio zombies lurking in the darkness, all three of them chowing down on a pair of corpses. As soon as the pale beam of light exposed them, they rose up.

"Shit!" Stanmore hissed.

Both men opened fire at about the same time. They each put down one and then Jack shifted his muzzle a bit and punched a gory hole through the third's head. God, they were ugly, so dead pale...and all of them seemed to have blood and shreds of flesh smeared across their mouths. Jack slowly approached the three new corpses, sweeping the area one more time, then he dropped into a crouch and patted them down. All three of them wore light green jumpsuits. They weren't Space Marines, so they must be the personnel that ran the nuclear plant.

Which meant that, unfortunately, none of them was packing any heat.

Jack stood back up and briefly considered checking the other two corpses, back in the shadows, but they looked too chewed up and he didn't want to go over there anyway. Jeez, now he was afraid of the dark. Phobos Base was resurrecting all his old fears. But why not? Anything could lurk in the darkness and apparently monsters were real. Jack tried to shake off the uneasy feelings and only partially succeeded.

He led Stanmore to the back of the platform where a broad security door had been forcefully ripped open by what might have been an explosion. They stepped into a small, bland square room that was clearly meant to serve as both ingress and checkpoint. The right wall was mostly glass and beyond it he could see another security checkpoint. This one didn't look quite as trashed as the other one. Maybe there'd be guns inside.

Stepping through the corresponding door and out into a lobby like area, which was dominated by a large circular desk, he and Stanmore swept the room. No zombies here, either. And...Jack hesitated, spying a pair of corpses near the desk. He moved forward. Both of them were nuke techs but it wasn't that particular factoid that drew him in. No, these were clearly zombies and they had clearly been killed by someone.

And recently.

Headshots, so probably a professional someone. A missing teammate?

Jack straightened up and took a moment to clear the lobby. There wasn't much, just a bunch of tables and chairs along the peripheral of the room and a few terminals on the walls that didn't show anything of any interest. He also found three large doorways, each of them at least clearly labeled. The one to the left lead to crew quarters, the one to the right led to storage and the one dead ahead led into the plant itself.

Leaving them all alone for the moment, Jack instead moved to a small door at the back of the room, not far from the one he'd entered through. It wasn't locked, thankfully, and as he stepped through, he found himself in the security checkpoint he'd been looking at earlier. It was obvious that people had been through here and most of the contents of the room had been pilfered, but that didn't mean it was _all_ gone.

Jack got to work searching, telling Stanmore to stand watch.

It took him five minutes, but he managed to secure two more magazines for his pistol and, lo and behold, a shotgun! He even managed to find enough shells to fully load it up. The DX-20 Pump Action Shotgun, or what the troops tended to refer to as a Blaster, held eight ten-gauge slug shells and was known to be a particularly powerful son a bitch. It was simple, basic and like a force of nature. Jack was more than thrilled at his discovery.

"Whoa, nice," Stanmore said as he came out of the security center.

"Yep," Jack replied, holstering his pistol. He opened his mouth to say something else, but his words failed to manifest as he heard something completely new.

"Did you hear that?" he murmured after it had faded away.

"No? What?" Stanmore replied, fear playing across his features.

Jack moved slowly across the lobby, towards the entrance to the crew quarters. It took a few seconds, but he heard it again. It was a strange sound, difficult to make out, but like before, it struck him as organic.

"Come on, we're checking these apartments out," he said.

Stanmore sounded like he was going to argue, but then stopped, probably thinking better of it, and moved to join him.

Jack opened up the door that led into this section of the structure.

An open room with open doorways cut into each of its metallic walls awaited his inspection. So did a pair of shredded corpses in the center of the room. They were so bloody that he couldn't even tell what color jumpsuit they were wearing. Swallowing nervously, Jack kept the shotgun held tightly in his grip and stepped into the room. Dead ahead, left and right were doorways that led into long corridors lined with doors at mathematical intervals.

Apartments, staff housing.

How many people had died in their homes?

Jack considered what to do for a long moment. They just didn't have the time to sort through every single apartment. As he was thinking, he heard the sound again. This time it was a lot clearer. It almost sounded like...an upset stomach. It was a strange, almost clicking, gurgling noise. And, on the heels of that sound, he heard the familiar groan of a zombie. So they definitely weren't alone in here. But what the hell was making that gurgling sound?

"Come on," he whispered to Stanmore. "Watch my back, stay close, stay quiet."

"Got it," Stanmore replied, his voice a strained murmur.

They broke left. Jack finally decided that he would do a sweep of the corridors, listen for signs of life. It was a lousy way to search and rescue, but he wasn't really here for that. Besides, he had the sneaking suspicion that a hell of a lot of people hadn't made it out alive. Of course, that train of thought just looped back to the same question he'd been asking himself since he'd first gotten that call in the middle of the night.

 _What happened?_

The pair of them made slow progress down the left corridor, which ended about twenty meters ahead and turned ninety degrees to the right. Jack got up to the edge of the wall as he approached the corner. He waited, listened, heard another groan somewhere not too far away. Peering cautiously around the corner, he spied a pair of zombies wandering aimlessly among the dead. He began to raise his shotgun, but something in his head said: _No._ He hesitated, then let the shotgun hang by its sling and unholstered his pistol.

He might need it for something else.

What? He had no idea, but his combat instincts were very rarely wrong.

Stepping out, he took aim and popped off two shots. They were clean hits and kills, and the zombies dropped to the floor. He led Stanmore around the corner after waiting to see if anything or anyone would come running at the sound of the shots. He patted down the corpses and found that they weren't carrying anything worth mentioning.

That seemed to be standard operating procedure in this awful new environment. He didn't have an infinite supply of bullets or shells, he'd need more eventually. And that wasn't even considering food, water, medical supplies.

He progressed down the length of this new corridor, which was a lot longer than the other one and was cross-sectioned with two more hallways before coming to an end in another sharp right turn. There was nothing alive and moving in the corridors he passed through, but he kept hearing that sound. It was closer than ever.

As Jack reached the end of this passageway, he stopped, waited, listened. The noise came again, and this time it was practically within spitting distance. He realized he was breathing more heavily and sweating now. His stomach was an acid knot of tension. Trying to swallow his fear, he switched back to his shotgun and peered around the corner.

Time seemed to stand still.

Something new stood about fifteen feet away from him with its back to him. But it wasn't new. He'd seen it before.

Even from the back, Jack immediately recognized the visage of terror he had witnessed on the display, standing beside Dr. Ishii in an abandoned comms center beneath the surface of Mars. Only it was here, now, in the flesh. It made the strange gurgling, clicking sound again and Jack felt his stomach turn over.

Carefully, he stepped out and raised his shotgun as silently as he could. Its back was huge and thick with muscle, and sported several long, ivory white spikes. The thing had to be six and a half feet tall. Its flesh looked like tough leather and it was a dirty red, like old blood. Jack tucked the shotgun into his shoulder and took aim, never taking his eyes off of the brand new monstrosity. As he prepared to take it down, the beast abruptly cut loose with a hiss and spun around. He had no idea what had given him away, but that didn't matter.

Jack stared into the face of horror.

Its head was shaped like a caricature of a skull. The leathery skin was stretched tight over the bones. Twin crimson orbs, glowing like hellfire, stared at him in a gaze of pure malignant hatred. And its mouth…

Its mouth was huge.

The beast issued a furious roar and raised its right hand. A ball of flame burst into being and the thing threw it like it was throwing a fucking baseball. About that time, Jack's reflexes kicked in and he squeezed the trigger.

About a second before the fireball punched him in the chest and knocked him back on his ass, he saw the thing's alien, demonic face disappear in a plume of deep, dark red gore. Grunting as he slammed to the floor, Jack gasped, trying to suck back in air, get his breath back. He sat up, still holding the shotgun in a death grip.

"What the _fuck_ is that!?" Stanmore moaned.

"Shut up!" Jack snapped, scrambling to his feet. He listened intently while also trying to check out his chestpiece. He thought he might have been on fire, but he wasn't actively in flames, although his chest was uncomfortably warm now. There were more groans now, getting closer. Jack switched back to his pistol and moved slowly forward, approaching the body, which was at the intersection of a T junction. He peered to his right, then ahead, and spied a trio of zombies coming for him. He aimed and fired, dropping all three of them.

A strange sense of dislocation settled over him as he looked down at the corpse he'd made. Its head was missing above the neck, ending in ragged pieces of flesh and hard protrusions of bone. Crouching down, he poked at the thing with the barrel of his pistol. What the fuck _was_ this thing? Its skin was definitely more a hide, thick and tough. It looked like it might even stand up to small arms fire, a kind of natural armor.

Frowning, he studied the thing's hands.

It definitely had some really nasty looking claws. Jack made a mental note to stay out of swiping range. After a long moment of examination, he determined that he had no fucking clue how that thing had produced fire.

This was definitely a big problem.

Jack got shakily to his feet. "Come on," he said quietly, continuing his patrol of the corridors in the apartment block.

Stanmore followed him silently.

He thought about the implications as he navigated the corridors, looking for survivors or supplies. The zombies had been one thing. Although they were crazy, they were a craziness he could at least get a grip on. The UAC had done some kind of experiment, it had gotten out and turned the staff into zombies. Okay, he could get behind that idea, at least in the sense that he could _understand_ it. But this thing?

The existence of this creature indicated that a _lot_ more had gone wrong than some kind of biohazard spill.

A strange thought came to Jack as he finished his search and came back into the lobby. Didn't he remember reading some story once when he was younger, some old, old fairy tale about creatures that played with fire?

Yeah...they were called Imps.

Well, these were Imps from fucking hell. There was that word again, that thought. Jack shoved it all aside, however, as he heard something over his radio. There was a jolt of static that sent a wave of startled panic straight through him, but it was offset by a surge of hope as he heard a voice rising through the white noise.

" _...eed help! Require fucking assistance...zzt...vate Jenkins, requesting assist...zzt...I'm in the storage...zzt..."_

The signal faded away, but it was more than enough to boost Jack's morale. Jenkins was alive! He was nearby!

"Come on, Stanmore, we're mounting a rescue mission," he said, a spring in his step as he crossed the lobby and opened up the door to storage.

He hesitated slightly, however, as he saw that the door led to a darkened stairwell. At the base of the stairwell he saw a portion of a room that was covered in blood. He also saw a severed arm laying down there. But it didn't matter. Mustering his courage, Jack gripped the shotgun and made his way down the stairwell, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure that Stanmore was still with him. The man looked as pale as a ghost, but he was there, pistol in hand. It would have to do. But damn would it be good to have another Marine around.

As he reached the base of the stairwell, Jack quickly scanned his environment. More corridors snaked away from him to either side. They were wide and lined with doorways, but they were also clogged with stacks of crates.

Not exactly the best situation.

Jack activated his radio suddenly, kicking himself mentally for not doing it sooner. Fuck, this place was really throwing him off his game.

That was a good way to get dead fast.

"Jenkins, can you hear me? It's Jack."

" _Jack!? Oh thank fucking Christ!"_ Jenkins cried, coming in a lot clearer now. _"Where are you?"_

"I'm very close to you. I've got the pilot with me. I'm in the storage area."

" _Be fucking careful. There's some big giant fucking pig thing down here. It nearly chomped my fucking arm off. I'm locked in a storage room. Um...if you're standing at the bottom of the stairwell, facing away from it, I went left. I'm...somewhere near the end of that hallway. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, I kind of freaked out."_

"I'm coming. Stay put," Jack replied, setting off in that direction.

" _Watch your ass,"_ Jenkins replied.

Even as annoying as the kid had been, it was fucking fantastic to hear his voice again. Jack moved slowly down the corridor, maneuvering carefully between the stacks of silver crates, Stanmore backing him up. It was a hell of a place to be. He couldn't stop thinking about what Jenkins had said. Some kind of pig thing?

The situation had even wider implications than he thought, and they were already pretty fucking wide to begin with.

No time to think about that now.

All at once, Jack and Stanmore came out into an open area where the crates fell away. He heard an awful chomping sound, mixed in with a deep, snuffling snorting noise that immediately filled his mind with the image of a gigantic boar. Shaking the idea off, Jack raised his shotgun and moved in on the sound, preparing to put down whatever the hell it was. There was just one open doorway and he saw a shadow being cast.

Something was moving around inside.

There was an awful ripping sound, followed by a loud, wet snap, and Jack knew that the beast was eating a corpse. His stomach turned over lazily and he fought to hang onto his last meal. He'd seen a lot of fucked up shit in his time, but the idea of a human corpse being eaten by this unknown horror from beyond the stars…

He shook his thoughts and fears loose and focused.

Like the Imp before it, he saw this thing from the back. Whatever it was, it was fucking huge. Although it was about as tall as he was, it was broad enough to fill an entire doorway. It looked very top-heavy, bulky with raw muscle that rippled beneath its dark pink skin that made him think of rare steak.

The thing stopped feasting abruptly and straightened up. He heard a deep snorting sound. Suddenly, it turned around.

Yet again, Jack stared into the face of horror. And this time, he was hard-pressed to deny that this thing looked like a...a demon.

Its head, which was fucking enormous, was jutting directly out of its chest. Its eyes were also glowing, but they glowed with a deep amber light that blazed with malice and animal hunger. Stubby, thick horns grew out of its head, giving it a very demonic appearance. But its mouth...holy damn, if he thought the Imp's mouth had been big, this thing's maw put it to shame. It looked like it could snap up steaks whole like they were just treats.

The beast cut loose with a roar, spraying bits of blood and shreds of flesh from its mouth, and began coming for Jack and Stanmore, reaching for them with thickly muscled arms. As Jack raised his shotgun, he was reminded wildly of a shaved gorilla. The beast forced itself through the door frame. Jack loosed a shotgun blast. The slug shell found its mark on the stomach. How the hell had he missed the head?!

He took aim and fired again as he backpedaled. The thing was fucking fast. This shot clipped its head, taking off one of its horns in a spray of blood. The creature let out another furious roar and kept charging. Jack screamed and dove to the side, barely managing to get out of its way. As he began scrambling to his feet, he heard Stanmore start to scream. Jack stared in stark horror as the beast grabbed him by the shoulders, held him in place, forced him down to his knees and then chomped his entire fucking head off.

Jack screamed again, this time in shock and rage and fury. He raised the shotgun and opened fire, blowing through every single one of the shells left in the damned thing, opening up bloody, gory holes in the thing's broad back. He became aware of quieter popping sounds, a pistol being fired from somewhere nearby.

He cocked the shotgun and tried to fire three more times before it finally clicked home that he was out of ammo.

Breathing heavily, trembling with adrenaline and fear and fury, he slowly reached into one of his pockets to reload the shotgun, but remembered he had no shells.

"Jack."

He turned as switched back to his pistol. Seeing Jenkins helped bring him back to reality. The man looked like hell. His armor was dented, singed and bloodied. The hand holding his pistol was trembling. His eyes were wide and wild.

"Jenkins."

They stood there like that for a long moment, as if in the eye of the storm. Then, somewhere nearby, a zombie groaned, and they were snapped back to the situation at hand. The eye of the storm was just an illusion.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Jenkins said.

"Hold on," Jack replied, turning and staring at the decapitated corpse of Stanmore. He knew his plan to bring the man inside was risky, but, goddamnit, leaving him there was surely riskier. Either way, what difference did it make?

The man was just as dead.

"So that's our pilot, huh?" Jenkins asked morosely as Jack crouched and patted him down.

"Yep," he replied.

He took the pilot's holster and attached it to his other hip, then slid the man's gun into it after making sure it was fully loaded. He only had a single spare magazine on him. Jack added it to his own cache and stood.

He led Jenkins up and out of the storage area, back into the lobby.

"So what the hell happened?" he asked.

Jenkins shook his head slowly. "I'm not entirely sure. I was here, we were...we were going through the plant. Sarge took some of the others on ahead to the Toxin Refinery. I was searching the place with Taylor and Peterson, but...we got attacked by the zombies, and then later, by the other ones. The red ones that throw fire. It was just like you said man, they looked just like you said. I got separated from the others, tried to fall back, but there were more of the things in the lobby here, so I ran downstairs, straight into that big fucker."

"And then you locked yourself in that room...have you heard from any of the others? Do you know who made it?" Jack asked.

"No, I haven't heard shit from anybody. And for all I know, they could all be alive."

Jack sighed. "Well...we need to move on. We have to get to the Toxin Refinery, find the others, figure out a way off this rock."

Jenkins looked like he didn't like that plan, but finally he just nodded. "Yeah, not like we got a lotta choice either way, huh?"

"Yeah. Come on, let's get to the tram."

They headed through the final door.

The nuclear plant was a confusing network of metal tunnels, but, mercifully, there was a fairly straightforward way through the mess. The two men came to a central corridor that led straight to the tramway. The shredded remains of zombies and some Imps that they found along the way gave Jack a bit of hope.

Were the others still alive? Still fighting?

He needed to know.

"You're sure you don't know anything else?" Jack asked as they moved across the exit lobby, towards the trams.

"I can't think of anything," Jenkins replied.

Jack opened the door that took them into the tram bay itself. He looked through the glass and saw that the tram wasn't in its station. Well, that was fine. He'd just recall it.

"Oh...fuck," Jenkins muttered.

"What?" Jack followed his gaze to the windows ahead of them that showed a view of the stretch of land between the Nuclear Plant and the Toxin Refinery.

The glass tunnel that provided protection for the tram was in pieces and, about halfway between the two buildings, he could see the tram itself, half in and half out of the tunnel, a twisted wreck. He stared at it for a long moment.

"Fuck," Jack said. He sighed heavily. "I guess we're walking there. Let's find some spare oxygen for the trip."


	12. EPISODE 01: Survivors

" _So, um...did you see anyone else?"_ Jenkins asked.

They'd been walking through the broken glass tunnel for about ten minutes so far. Jack was silently hoping that there was nothing out here on the surface, because...well, besides the obvious reason that he didn't want to face down any more of these fucking horrors, the idea that they could survive in dead space was even more terrifying.

"No, I didn't see anyone else. I mean, I haven't checked every single hiding space, but I didn't come across anyone else from the team," he replied.

" _I saw someone from Mars City when I was searching the Nuke Plant. Guy named...shit, I can't even remember his fucking name. He was just this guy who went on patrol with me once. Kind weird, fidgety. He had bug eyes, you know? And now he's dead. Probably everyone who was here and everyone who came up before us is dead."_

"We don't know that," Jack said firmly, although he had to agree with the kid. Phobos Base was so bloody and shredded that it seemed like it'd be a miracle if anyone survived at all. "What I've been thinking about," he said, trying to change the subject, "is what these creatures are. I'm having a difficult time fitting it all together."

" _What do you mean, fitting it all together? It's just...crazy. This whole thing is crazy."_

"Of course it's crazy, but obviously _some_ sequence of events led up to it. They came from somewhere. They're here for something. I mean, as crazy as it all is, it's also kind of...specific. Everyone who was killed...why were they killed? How? Whatever it was, it happened really fast. So that must mean..."

Jack trailed off as he saw something up ahead.

"Must mean what?" Jenkins asked.

"What _is_ that?" Jack replied.

"What?"

Jenkins joined him in looking. There was some kind of light up ahead, way down the tunnel. It seemed to be drifting around. It was a bright yellow light that seemed to flicker, almost like flames. For a moment, he had an image of an Imp, holding a fireball and waving it around. But that didn't seem right. This was something different. But _what_? How the hell was there a fire in an environment without an atmosphere?

Abruptly, his radio cracked to life.

" _...zzt...help me!...omebody help...zzt..."_

At that same moment, a blue-suited figure stumbled into one of the pools of light cast by the few remaining work-lights in the tunnel.

Jack cursed and started running. Another survivor! Obviously a local. Judging by the suit, probably an engineer of some kind.

"I'm coming! Keep running!" Jack said.

The man lifted his head at this. He tried to say something but it was lost to the strange interference that seemed to blanket the whole moon. The man started running towards them again, but he was still a good ways off, maybe three hundred feet down the tunnel. The two men picked up the pace, pushing themselves. Jack tried to keep an eye out for whatever threat the man was running from. All he could see was that strange yellow glow.

Only…

It was making a beeline straight for the man now, and there were more of them. And they were coming directly for the engineer as well.

They kept running towards each other. Jack had his pistol out and ready, his mind furiously trying to come up with an answer as to what in the fuck these things were. They were too slow-moving to be projectiles of some kind, at least he thought so. The engineer was close now, maybe ten meters away, but the lead projectile was now zeroing in on him. It rushed forward, abruptly cutting the distance between them down to nothing.

Jack caught sight of something right before the strange glow disappeared _into_ the engineer, but he couldn't believe his eyes.

There was no way he'd saw what he thought he saw.

It was impossible.

Suddenly, the engineer stopped dead in his tracks. He started screaming. Jack and Jenkins came to a halt about five meters from the guy, who was grabbing his helmet now, screaming over the radio link, his voice coming in broken by static, making it even creepier. Abruptly, he stopped. His hands slowly dropped to his sides, his head slowly raised.

Behind the visor, Jack now saw a strange, flickering glow.

"What the fu...what happened?" Jenkins murmured.

"Just wait," Jack replied.

He had a flicker of an idea, but he didn't want to accept it, didn't want to examine it at all. The engineer was staring at them.

"Are you okay?" Jack made himself ask, although he already knew the answer.

The engineer let out a low groan that was becoming intimately familiar.

"Is he a fuck-a fucking _zombie!?_ " Jenkins cried.

The engineer reached down and grasped the handle of a pistol he had holstered on his thigh. He pulled it out and took at the two.

"Drop it! Now!" Jack snapped, desperately wanting to believe that this wasn't happening. The barrel of his own pistol had sagged slightly but now it snapped back up.

The engineer popped off a shot and nearly winged him. That was enough for Jack. He fired twice, putting two rounds through the zombie's faceplate. The monster let out a gurgling roar as it fell slowly to the surface of the tramway, flash-frozen blood spraying from its shattered visor. As he was processing this, something caught his eye.

There were three more floating fireballs still in the tunnel with them.

And they were getting closer now.

This time, as they crossed the threshold, coming into the light thrown by one of the working strips overhead, there was no mistaking what he saw.

They were skulls. Human skulls.

Flying, flaming skulls.

Jack felt his sanity and control slip a notch suddenly and he found himself thinking wildly, as he took aim, _sure, why the fuck not?! We've got goddamned zombies and fire-throwing imp demons and fucking shaved gorillas with mouths the size of Texas...WHY NOT THROW SOME FUCKING ON FIRE FLYING SKULLS INTO THE MIX!?_

The other half of his brain, the one that was cold, rational and calculating, and had spent the last ten years fighting for its life as a Marine, was ensuring that his aim was dead on. Jack began popping off shots, putting four rounds into the damned thing. And oh, to make matters even better, they had _horns_ , and teeth like razor blades.

As he punched the fifth shot into the bony bastard, it suddenly burst in a spray of flames and bleached white bone fragments. How could they be on fire?! They were outside, in dead space! There was no atmosphere!

Jenkins was picking up the slack, finally. He added his own gunfire to the mix. In the end, they each ended up emptying a whole magazine taking the remainder of the flying skulls down. As the rain of bone matter finished (slowed by the low gravity), Jack ejected his magazine and slapped a fresh one in. He was still trying to process everything, but his brain reminded him that he had limited oxygen and this wasn't exactly the best environment to be standing around in.

" _What the fuck was that!?"_ Jenkins demanded finally.

"I don't know, but we have to keep moving," Jack replied. "Come on, we need to get inside."

" _I-but-I mean-what-"_

"Jenkins! We have to get inside, we don't have enough oxygen to waste out here."

That seemed to get him moving at least. With a heavy sigh, the fellow Marine finally nodded tightly and the two men resumed their journey through the tunnel.

"Jenkins," Jack said after a moment of rumination, "we can't let those things get near us. You saw what happened. One of those skulls dove _into_ that guy and he became a zombie. That must be how it happens."

" _How is that even possible?"_ Jenkins replied, his voice quiet, barely above a murmur.

"I don't know, all we know is that it _is_ possible. Just another threat to watch out for. We have to treat this like any other combat situation. Stay sharp, stay focused and watch out for threats at all times. We do that, we'll find the others and get the hell out of here. We've got a shitload of intel to dump on Kelly when we get back to Mars."

" _Yeah..."_

A few minutes later, they were cycling through an auxiliary airlock next to the main tram entrance, no doubt meant for maintenance personnel. Both men remained silent as the airlock finished filling with atmosphere. There were a few seconds of silence, then a loud clang that always made Jack jump now whenever he had to hear it as the inner doors slid open. As he stared out into a blood drenched lobby bathed in flickering light, Jack was amazed at how happy he was just to be back inside. He opened his air vents so that he'd stop using his internal supply and had to make himself ignore the reek of blood and death.

"Come on," he muttered, stepping carefully through the door, sweeping his half of the room with his shotgun while Jenkins took the other half. It was clear, they were alone. For now. As he took in the finer details of the entrance lobby, finding it not all that dissimilar from the one to the Nuke Plant, he thought to himself: _so, this is the Toxin Refinery_. Although he knew this wasn't the refinery itself. That was deeper in.

"Which way?" Jenkins asked.

Jack considered it, but even as he surveyed the three ways to go, his decision was apparently made for him: there was just one way to go. One of the doors in the room led to a security station, (tragically empty of anything that might be of any real use to either of them) and the main door that led to the refinery was locked down. A double check of it confirmed that they'd need a color-coded keycard in order to get through.

A blue keycard.

That just left one way to go, the maintenance/storage section.

With a sigh, he took point, favoring his shotgun now for what he imagined would be close quarters. If he ran into a nasty down there, he'd need to be able to kill it in a hurry. The security armor was supposed to be good stuff, but he didn't feel like testing it anymore than he already had. At least this time he didn't have to go down any stairs. He and Jenkins moved down a short passageway and into an antechamber that led to several other areas.

"Now what?" Jenkins muttered.

Jack sighed. "We should probably split up. We'll cover more ground that way. We need to find that keycard and it isn't in the security checkpoint."

"What if it's within the refinery itself?" Jenkins replied.

"Then we'll have to find another way in. Look, you take the storage area, I'll take maintenance. We meet back here in ten minutes regardless, got it?" he replied.

Jenkins looked nervous, but to his credit, he seemed to swallow his fear and nodded. "Got it."

"Good luck."

"You too."

Jack hated to go off by himself, and he hated how afraid he was even more. Fear was something he'd had to conquer a long time ago and he thought he'd done a pretty good job, but god _damn_ was this place fucking scary.

Gathering his courage, Jack set off down the corridor the would take him into the maintenance sector. He didn't like the way the lights were dim or the fact that he could hear the occasional growl from a zombie lurking somewhere nearby. He kept his movements tight and controlled, making nice, slow progress down one corridor and up another, pausing to check any rooms he came across. Most of it was just a lot of the same.

Abandoned work rooms.

Derelict maintenance bays.

Bloodied bathrooms and break rooms.

He popped zombie heads whenever he came across them, dropping the bastards like flies as quick as he could. He didn't like the way they seemed to be a little bit faster now than when he first encountered them back in the Hangar. He also didn't like the way that more of them seemed to be holding onto tools of some kind, and clearly intending to use them as weapons. Hammers or big, solid wrenches.

Not that they got close enough to do so.

As he came to the end of the maintenance area, his instincts started to get tripped. Nothing had actually changed, and yet…

Something was wrong.

However, he made himself keep going, and it was for the better. For as he came to the final room, a long, reverse J shaped room that started out narrow but widened into a larger, open bay at the end, he saw something distinctly blue in the bay area. It was resting on a workbench. Jack started towards it, but hesitated. Something was definitely wrong here. It was too...easy. Why was it there? He moved up to the edge of the wall to his right, which, about halfway down the room, ended abruptly. He waited, listened, heard nothing.

Jack peered around the corner.

Nothing. Just more wall, some lockers, a few tables, a couple workbenches.

But the bad feeling didn't abate. Sighing, he made himself step forward. They needed that keycard. He walked up to the table, reached out to grab it, hesitated, looked around again, and then reached out and grabbed it.

As soon as he did, the lights shut off.

His heart leaping into his throat, he heard the distinct sound of a door whirring open behind him and he spun around, shotgun raised. A thin light was revealed and he realized his mistake. Along the wall behind him had been a blank spot, what he assumed was just dead space. But it was left intentionally vacant because that spot was in fact a door that led to a closet. A very well-concealed door. Damn!

Two Imps were inside and they cut loose with loud, serpent like hisses as they marched out of the closet and wound up to pitch those fireballs of theirs. Jack's body was already responding to this new threat. He aimed and popped off a shot, and it was a good one. Put a fist-sized hole clean through the chest of the lead Imp. It flew backwards, right into its buddy, which through off the evil thing's aim. The fireball that it threw sailed over Jack's head, lighting up the area briefly. While it was readjusting, Jack readjusted his own aim and fired again.

The blast tore away a portion of its skull in a plume of dark red gore and it fell to the floor as well. Breathing heavily, trembling slightly from the adrenaline high, he waited to see if anything else nasty was waiting for him. Carefully, he made his way back through the maintenance maze. When he got back to the agreed meeting point, Jenkins wasn't back yet. While he waited, Jack checked over his ammo supply.

He'd mostly used his pistol to put down zombies once he realized the quarters weren't quite as close as he'd thought, and he remembered just how low his shotgun shell supply was. As it was, he was sitting at just a pair of shells left in the gun. He'd also expended another full magazine for his pistol. He still had four left, but it was enough to make him worry. With all the wrecked guns and spent shell casings around, he was beginning to suspect that most of the ammo had been used up in the war that had engulfed Phobos Base.

Just as he was deciding to go in and check on Jenkins, the kid returned.

"Hey," he said, looking glum. "No keycard."

Jack grinned and helped up the blue card.

"Oh...well shit," Jenkins said, returning the grin.

Jack laughed. "Come on, let's go see if there's anyone else alive in this shit heap."

They hurried back to the main room and Jack swiped the keycard, then pocketed it, just in case. The doors made a pleasant chiming sound and slid open, revealing an entry bay. Immediately, Jack didn't like the refinery. In the entry bay alone, he spied a good half-dozen of the gray forty gallon drums, and some of them were leaking glowing, green toxic waste. The smell was acidic and awful. He quickly cleared the area and moved on to the next door, opening it up and stepping through. Once Jenkins was inside, he closed it behind him.

It didn't get much better in here.

Now they were in a broad corridor, the place littered with barrels and dead bodies. Jack was pleased to see that there were Imps and a few of the big bastards among them. Score a few for his side. Just as he and Jenkins began making progress down the passageway, they heard a shotgun blast, and it wasn't all that far away. Then, another, and a third, and the popping sounds of a pistol being fired off rapidly.

Both men started running.

They sprinted the length of the corridor, dodging corpses and barrels, until they hit the other side and slapped the open button. This time, the door opened to reveal a much broader room, some kind of central processing chamber. The walls were lined with large silver cylinders and a huge piece of machinery dominated the center of the room. Whoever was firing away like there was no tomorrow was on the other side of that machinery and several Imps and zombies were making their way around either side of the bulky piece of equipment.

"Take them down!" Jack called, drawing a bead.

The first shot was good and slammed into the back of a zombie's head, spraying his brains all over the other zombies and Imps. Several of them stopped and turned around. And some of them were holding _guns_.

And they began using them.

Jack and Jenkins quickly began putting them down, strafing to avoid the return fire. Between the slow-moving fireballs of the Imps and the lousy aim of the zombies, they managed to put down four Imps and half a dozen zombies, capping them with headshots. As soon as the last zombie fell, the pair hurried around the central piece of machinery and found a pair of fellow Marines! He even recognized one of them.

Jennifer was still alive.

And she was kicking ass, too. She was the one with the shotgun. As they came around into view, she was just blowing the head off of an Imp. And right behind her, coming towards her like a fucking express train, was one of the shaved gorillas that his brain had labeled as a Demon. He screamed a warning and opened fire, popping the skull of a zombie that had been drawing a bead on her. Without hesitation, Jennifer spun around, racked the shotgun and opened fire directly into the thing's big fat fucking mouth.

The back of its head exploded in a spray of blood, brain matter and bone fragments.

The next few moments passed without words as the four Marines were forced to speak only in gunshots. There were a good two dozen zombies, Imps and Demons coming in on them from a trio of different entrances into the area. When the gunfire cut off, an almost painful silence fell over the group. They all spent several seconds waiting, breathing heavily, listening and watching for any more enemies to come in.

But they were alone.

Jennifer was the first to speak. "Jack! You made it!"

"Barely," he replied, grinning. Then he started laughing. Surviving hardcore battles sometimes did that to you. He thought it was your brain suddenly being happy that you had, in fact, survived something that very well could have killed you.

"We fucking made it!" Jenkins roared.

"Yeah, fantastic," the other Marine, who he recognized as Peterson, their combat technician, muttered miserably. "We made it...for now."

His somber statement seemed to douse their good cheer and Jack was more than a little upset at that. After all they'd been through so far, it seemed right to celebrate. But his more practical side knew that they didn't have the time.

"What are you doing here?" Jennifer asked as she approached.

"Let's search for ammo while I give you the bad news and the worse news," Jack replied.

Jennifer sighed, then nodded in agreement.

While they searched the corpses they'd produced, he told her about taking Stanmore into the base, finding and fighting the creatures, finding Jenkins and Stanmore's death. Once he'd sobered the group with that bad news, Jennifer relayed her own tale.

"It was a nightmare," she muttered. "Jenkins and Peterson and I were left behind in the Nuke Plant to check it out for survivors, while Blackmore took the rest on ahead to the Toxin Refinery to do the same. Then they were supposed to wait for us and we'd all head on together to Command Control. But then we were attacked by these fucking things..." she said, looking around at the field of corpses. "Things went nuts, I lost track of everyone. I don't know where you went," she said, looking at Jenkins.

"I, uh, beat a retreat. I ended up in that downstairs storage area," he replied.

"I see. Well, I finally managed to find Peterson after a while of playing hide and seek and we ended up deciding to head on to the refinery. We haven't found anyone yet, alive or dead. Although I like our chances a lot more now that you guys are here."

"Me too," Jack replied. It felt fantastic to have more Marines on his side. They could get shit done a lot faster.

"About the pilot..." Peterson said, and they all looked at him. He seemed to hesitate under their combined gaze, looking as if he regretted calling attention to himself. "We should be fine. I know that Sergeant Blackmore can pilot," he finished.

"Perfect," Jack said. "We should..." he hesitated, something occurred to him, and then he looked over at Peterson again.

"What?" he asked nervously.

"Technically, you have the highest rank here. We're all Privates, you're a PFC."

He shook his head immediately. "No. I know the truth, you and Taylor are actual warriors, me and Jenkins are just...well, they didn't send us here for good reasons."

"Speak for yourself...oh nevermind, you're right," Jenkins muttered.

Jack considered it, looking at Jennifer. Peterson was right. Although they had so far proven themselves as capable fighters, neither were someone who should be making decisions. Jennifer, on the other hand, used to be the same rank as him, and he could tell she was very competent. But she was shaking her head.

"After the reason I got sent here...let's just say I'm not in any mood to be making any kind of command decisions. You figure it out," she replied.

He nodded, figuring she had a point. If he'd gotten most of his squad killed, he'd have pretty much the same reaction. "All right, first off, have either of you heard anything on the radio?"

"No, we've heard shit-all," Jennifer replied.

"Great..." Jack muttered.

"I was thinking about that, actually," Peterson said. "If we could get over to the security center at the other side of the building, I might be able to patch into the local network and boost the signal. It's a long shot and I doubt we'd get anyone from Mars, but Command Control might not be so unreasonable," he explained.

"It's worth a shot," Jack replied. "Let's get going, and keep an eye out for any survivors and supplies."

They all responded affirmatively and the quartet of them set off. Jack had to admit, he felt good. Having a squad of Marines at his back, even just three others, boosted his confidence and morale. He had a squad, a plan and more ammo. Speaking off, he began reloading his shotgun. He'd burned through a pair of magazines and the rest of his shotgun shells during the battle. In the ensuing aftermath, he'd managed to piece together enough shells for a full shotgun and, after splitting up the magazines, he'd replaced the two he'd expended. It was nice, but...it felt like a zero sum game. He still didn't have a lot of ammo to throw around.

And it seemed like the hostile forces seemed to have a lot of nasties to throw his way.

They made their way out of the central room and down one of the larger corridors that should take them out to the other side. Jack took point again, shotgun in hand.

"I was thinking about naming the creatures," he said.

"That's a good idea," Jennifer replied.

"Why, you writing a book?" Peterson muttered.

"No, it's a good idea to agree on clear labels for them so we can call them out in a snap if we have to," Jack replied.

"Oh."

"Zombies are obvious. The red things that throw fire, I think we should call them Imps. Any objections?" he asked. There were none. "Perfect. The big shaved gorillas, I think of as...well, Demons. Cause of the horns." No objections there, either. "And then the flying skulls-"

"Whoa, wait, what?" Jennifer asked.

"You haven't run into those?" Jenkins replied.

She shook her head, so did Peterson. "No."

"They're flying skulls with horns and they're on fire. Do _not_ let them get close to you under any circumstances, they are instant kill enemies," Jack replied.

"How?" Peterson asked.

"It's going to sound crazy but, we saw one of them dive _into_ another survivor, a local engineer, and he turned into a zombie immediately."

"Jesus," Jennifer whispered. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"I'll make sure to keep an eye out. What were you thinking about calling them?"

"I..." he hesitated as a name popped into his head. "Lost Souls," he murmured.

"Wow," Jennifer replied. "That's...pretty good, actually."

"Thanks."

Up ahead, something growled. It was very deep and menacing. Jack aimed to the right as a big, dark pink thing walked out of a side passageway. Wanting to get the Demon dead before it got closer, he aimed and pumped out a round.

He missed, except that he _didn't_ miss. The shotgun shell instead connected with one of those big gray barrels of toxic crap he'd seen all over the place. It made a spectacular explosion that turned the Demon into free-flying hamburger meat.

"Holy shit!" Jenkins cried. "That was fucking awesome!"

"Well, that's interesting," Jack muttered, blinking several times, trying to get the afterimage cleared from his retina. "Goddamn, those things are a weapon all their own. Come on, steer clear of them and let's go."

They made their way to the end of the corridor and, a few minutes later, emerged in another lobby. Jack switched to his pistol as he spied a trio of zombies. No sense in wasting shotgun shells on freaking zombies. He punched a hole through the forehead of one of them, while Jenkins and Jennifer took down the others. As they finished clearing the immediate area and scavenging for ammo, Jack tossed a glance at Peterson.

The guy wasn't looking so good.

After he'd secured the security station and brought the combat tech in to get to work, he stood guard by the open doorway, keeping an eye on Jennifer and Jenkins as they searched for ammo, then started talking with Peterson.

"So, Peterson, what'd you do to get sent up here?" he asked.

The combat tech remained silent for a moment. "It's something I'd rather not talk about," he replied finally.

"I need to know if you're on the level, Peterson. We're in a dangerous situation and you're the only one I don't have a good read on. I need to know if you're gonna flip out on us, cause the only way we're getting out of this alive is if we all pull together."

"I know, I know," he muttered. He sighed heavily and kept working. "I got some people killed. I was down in Australia, fighting against the private contractors down there, joint US-Australia operation. We had these automated drone guns set up that were the only things holding them back from overrunning our outpost. They went down, some damage done to a power line out in the field. I was the nearest tech. We got out there and it was fucking hell, man. Mortars, rocket launchers, drones flying overhead with goddamned guns mounted on them...we got out there and before I could start the repairs, some guys broke through our line, came right at me, wiped out my defense. I panicked. I ran. I didn't stop running until I found a bombed out bunker and I hid. They managed to get another tech out there, fixed it, kept the base from getting overrun, but because of my delay, we lost a lot of people. So yeah, I just fucking panicked, I lost my head. I couldn't hold it together anymore after that, but the Corps is the only life I know.

"So I got shipped up here."

"I see," Jack murmured. "You think you can keep it together? You've done pretty well so far."

"Yeah, I think so," he replied.

Jack was prepared to ask more questions, but suddenly the radio crackled to life. "I think I've got something," Peterson said.

There was a faint voice coming through a haze of static.

"Can you clean it up anymore?" Jack asked.

"Hold on," Peterson murmured, going back to the controls. The other two came into the security room, Jennifer still standing watch by the door. Abruptly, the signal resolved.

" _-nyone hear me? Over."_ He recognized the voice. It was Corporal McGee.

"Corporal, this is Private Ward. I hear you. Over."

" _Ward? Christ, I thought you were dead. Where are you? What's your situation? Over."_

"I'm near the north tram station of the Toxin Refinery. I've got Jenkins, Taylor and Peterson with me. Over," he replied.

" _Goddamn, that's good news. Listen, I'm injured, holed up in a supply closet in Command Control. Last I knew, Blackmore and the others were still alive and fighting. We've been trying to get into the control room but this place is fucking packed with the creatures. I'm not sure where the others are now and I can't raise anyone else on the radio. I need you four to get here and help me find the others so we can finish our mission. Over."_

"So we're still going for the objective? Over." Jack asked.

" _Yes. We need to find if there are any survivors on this place and discern the nature of this, this...infestation, and see what kind of threat there is of it spreading to Deimos or Mars or even farther than that. And we need to restore communications so that we can call back to Mars and warn them what the fuck is going on up here. Over."_

"I'm with you, McGee. We're headed your way right now. Over."

" _Affirmative, I'll be waiting. And it's damn good to hear from you. Out."_

"Same. Out."

He looked at the others. "Well, you heard the woman. Let's get moving."


	13. EPISODE 01: Command Control

This time, at least, the tram was still functional.

Jack had dropped himself bodily into the conductor's chair and, as soon as he confirmed everyone else was onboard and there weren't any immediate threats in the area, he closed the doors and started them off towards Command Control. The sooner they made progress, the sooner he could be off this wretched fucking moon. Even the comatose boredom and misery of Mars looked fantastic by comparison. Although he'd be lying if he didn't admit to some perverse pleasure at putting these hideous caricatures of humans and monster beasts down. When he was younger, he used to fantasize about something like this.

Who the hell hadn't thought about fighting zombies?

He glanced over his shoulder as the door opened up. Jennifer came in. She closed the door behind her and joined him in the cramped compartment. They were currently cycling through the big airlock that would admit them access to the lengthy glass tunnel that snaked its way across the dead, bleak surface of Phobos.

"Hey," he said, turning away from the controls. She leaned up against a nearby bulkhead. "How are you doing? I, uh...we haven't really had a chance to catch up," he added awkwardly. Although they'd slept together multiple times now and they'd both trusted each other enough to share a bed when they were asleep, at their most vulnerable, he still didn't honestly know the extent or genuine nature of their relationship.

He knew that he liked her, and respected her, and she didn't have any immediately obvious deal-breakers for potentially a long term relationship. Of course, it was pretty insane to be thinking about this right now.

"I'm tired," she replied, then laughed. "Hungry, thirsty. My back hurts and my ankles and knees are sore from all the damned running around, falling over, diving for cover, kicking the shit out of zombies. We got woken up in the middle of the night for this crap. What about you? It was pretty gutsy to come in here after us."

"If there was even a chance that any of you were still alive, I was coming in," he replied flatly. "Although it wasn't like I had much choice. I think the same thing that's screwing with the radios is also screwing with the ships. It's the only thing that makes sense. Stanmore panicked and tried to flee, but the ship wouldn't lift off. And all the others, it wouldn't make sense that the other pilots wouldn't try a retreat, especially if something was ripping its way into the airlock with nothing but brute force and determination. So even if we find Blackmore and the others and get back to the ship, I don't think we're going home."

"Then...what do we do?" Jennifer murmured.

"I don't know. Dig around, find out what the fuck they were doing up here," Jack replied. He sympathized with her. He was tired, hungry and sore, too. The adrenaline had amped him up, and he knew he could keep going for a while yet, but how much longer would he have to be here? How long until he needed to sleep? Technically he could go for weeks without food, but he'd start suffering for it long before that.

And then there was the matter of ammo. There didn't seem to be enough of it around.

"It's, uh, it's been good to see you again," Jennifer said, giving him a somewhat awkward smile.

He favored her with an equally awkward one. So she didn't quite know where they stood either. Unfortunately, now just wasn't the time to deal with that.

Jack returned his attention to the tunnel ahead of them. They weren't far from Command Control now. The huge structure loomed above them. They cycled through the airlock and pulled into the tram station.

A pair of Imps and three zombies awaited them.

"Great," Jack muttered as the creatures became aware of their presence, staring at them through the glass, and attacked. The Imps began throwing fireballs and all three zombies were armed, two of them with pistols and one with a shotgun. Fuck. This was looking worse by the second. He got up and moved with Jennifer back into the main cabin.

"Get ready," he said.

Jack was on one side of the door, Jennifer was on the other side, and Jenkins and Peterson were further back in the tram, prepared to provide backup. It was now or never. The glass was cracking from the Imps' and zombies' attacks. Jack hit the button and the doors slid open. As soon as they did, he and Jennifer popped out, pistols in hand, picking out targets of opportunity. He popped off two shots right away, turning the eye of one zombie, a former Space Marine, into a geyser of blood and gore, and punching an ugly hole through the forehead of another. Jennifer was just as good, her round tearing away a good portion of the left Imp's skull.

The survivors launched their counter attack.

A .45 caliber round embedded itself in the tram's frame hardly an inch from Jack's head and the Imp sent a fireball that sailed in between them and into the cart itself. Peterson shouted but Jack didn't have time to see if he was hit. He adjusted his aim and punch a round through the zombie's mouth as it roared and readjusted its aim. The back of its head burst like a ripe melon. Jennifer put down the Imp with two to the head.

All became still and silent.

"I think that it's," Jack said. He turned. "Anyone hit?"

"I'm fine," Jenkins muttered.

"Negative," Peterson managed. Judging by the scorch mark behind him, the fireball would have just missed him. If he hadn't been wearing his pressure suit, Jack was sure that the man would have burns.

"Then let's get a move on," Jack said, heading out of the tram cart. He and Peterson policed up the ammo while Jennifer and Jenkins patrolled the area, checking the shadows for lurking hostiles. Jack whistled, catching Jenkins' attention, and held up the shotgun. The man hurried over, holstering his pistol, and accepted the shotgun.

"Thanks," he said, marveling over the fine piece of hardware.

"It's low on ammo, conserve it," Jack replied.

Jenkins nodded and looped the strap over his shoulder, then let the weapon hang. He managed to scrounge half a shotgun's worth of shells and another magazine. As he prepared to head into the building beyond, his radio crackled to life again.

" _Private Ward, are you there? Over."_ It was McGee again.

"That's affirmative, Corporal. Over."

" _What's your sitrep? Over."_

"We've just entered Command Control and have been putting down a few problems. We're about to head into the main facility. Over."

" _Good. I managed to get out of the storage room and make it to an infirmary. I'm patching myself up right now. But I needed to warn you. There's something new, something I haven't encountered yet before and it's very dangerous. Over."_

"What is it? Over."

" _It's..."_ she hesitated. _"Ghosts."_

"Ghosts?"

" _Yes. Ghosts. I don't know what they are or how or why, but they're almost invisible and they're mean, nasty fuckers. Keep a very sharp eye out for them. Now, you should be able to find a map of the facility in the lobby. I'm in Infirmary Four. Over."_

"Affirmative. We'll get there as soon as possible. Over."

" _Good. Out."_

Jack led the way into the lobby, finding it vacant, though bloody, like everywhere else on Phobos apparently. He wondered if there was an untouched location yet. This lobby, at least, had more variety. There were two security stations, one tucked in each corner nearest him to the left. They were small but looked solidly built, little more than large kiosks built into the corners. Not that it had done them any good in the end.

This lobby was larger, with a big octagonal desk on a slightly raised platform dominating the center of the room. There were several doors, one leading to another apartment block, another to some cafeterias and recreational areas and a gym, the final, biggest, most important one leading deeper into Command Control itself.

Jack went forward to try that door while he sent the others to check out the security centers, looking for goodies like bullets, guns or grenades. He pondered over McGee's words as he approached the big door. The woman had been injured, could she be hallucinating from blood loss? She sounded pretty competent…

After a moment's consideration, Jack ultimately decided that she was probably on the money. As flat out fucking out there as 'ghosts' sounded as a legitimate, straightforward warning coming out of the mouth of a Marine, well, everything was crazy up here on Phobos Base. Jack let out a curse as he suddenly realized that the door to the rest of the facility was locked down tight. Then he cursed again as he realized the nature of the lockdown.

It was under a triple-lock, meaning he needed three keycards to get through it. The screen he was looking at calmly informed him that he needed a blue, a yellow and a red keycard. Remembering that he actually _had_ a blue keycard, he pulled it out and gave it a shot, slotting it. The door buzzed angrily and he sighed heavily and threw it on the floor. Of course they wouldn't work in other buildings. Standard security measure.

"What's wrong?" Jennifer asked.

He turned around. She was within the octagonal desk.

"We need three keycards to get through this door," he replied, approaching her. Then he paused, "Although..." he reactivated his radio. "Corporal McGee, Ward here. The door to Command Control is under lockdown, do you think you could give us some help? Over." He waited, listening. "Corporal McGee, do you copy? Over." Nothing. The radio had gone dead again. "Fuck!" he snapped, resiting the suddenly powerful urge to kick a nearby corpse.

"I've got the map," Jennifer said.

"Gather round, everyone," Jack called.

He and the others joined her in the octagonal desk and studied the map. Command Control was pretty big. "All right, we need to find a way to download this to our suits," he said, raising his wrist and checking over for some kind of port.

"These pressure suits aren't designed to hold anymore data than the basic operating system that runs them," Peterson said.

"Of fucking course not," Jack whispered, dropping his wrist. "All right," he murmured, looking over the map again, this time checking out the more immediate area. There didn't seem to be any surprises and it all looked pretty straightforward. "This is the plan. Peterson and Jenkins, check the cafeterias and the rec rooms, basically just anything you can find over there. And was there anything worthwhile in the security checkpoints?"

"They were cleaned out," Jenkins replied.

"Fantastic. Jennifer and I will go over to the living quarters. We're looking for keycards. One red, one blue, one yellow. And obviously any spare ammo. And keep your eyes out for ghosts," he said, feeling slightly ridiculous.

"We'll get on it," Jenkins said, heading away. Peterson trailed after him.

Jack and Jennifer headed in the opposite direction, towards the apartments. Something made Jack switch over to his shotgun. He opened up the door and they cleared the room beyond. What he saw did not inspire any amount of confidence and he was glad that he'd switched to his shotgun. This apartment block was a bit more upper-class. It had an entrance lobby and everything, complete with some vending machines, a desk and a little lounge area. The furniture had been burned and smashed to little more than kindling, the vending machines trashed, and the bodies...that's what had him concerned. There were a few regular corpses there, but some Imps too. Normally that would make Jack thrilled, but now it just left him confused.

They had bites taken out of them.

Some of them were missing limbs, others their heads, some whole chunks of their torsos. They reminded him of the bite he'd seen taken out of Stanmore. So Demons were around and...apparently they liked the taste of Imps. So _that_ was interesting as hell. They didn't like each other. He'd assumed they were all working together, but if they weren't...that raised a whole lot of questions. And it could be useful.

But it also made him worried. He didn't relish the thought of fighting these big nasty fuckers in tight corridors again.

"Let's go," he murmured.

They had three ways to go, although judging by the map they'd seen, these places were a bit more straightforward. Not network of corridors, no maze. Just straight corridors stretching for about a hundred meters with apartments stretched along. To make matters even worse, however, the corridors were very dimly lit. Power must not have been getting to the sector very well. He and Jennifer set off down the first corridor to the left. They moved slowly but surely, keeping a sharp eye out for anything red, blue or yellow.

They checked into any apartment that had an open door, finding nothing but death and destruction. They managed to make it there and back again without finding anything, either dangerous or worthwhile. And the same again down the corridor to the right. As Jack stepped in front of the final corridor, glancing nervously at Jennifer, who had a pretty good poker face, and hoped that the other two were having better luck.

"Come on," he said quietly, setting off one more time. If they didn't find anything down this one, they were going to have to get inventive.

The pair moved slowly down the dark passageway.

Something was wrong with this one. The other two corridors had felt ominous, but this place felt downright dangerous.

Up ahead, something let out a deep growl. He recognized it immediately. A Demon. So much for McGee's ghosts. He waited for it to come to him, listening to the growls. Jennifer was steady beside him, shotgun at ready.

Jack thought he caught sight of some movement up ahead, but he couldn't be sure in the low lighting. When he heard the growling, it was startlingly close. In fact, it sounded like it was in the hallway with them, very close. He suddenly heard pounding footsteps. He could see movement again, some strange, vague kind of movement.

"What the hell is that?" Jennifer whispered.

Suddenly, Jack realized that McGee wasn't mistaken. "Shoot it!" he cried, aiming for the shadowy movement in front of him and squeezing the trigger. There was a spray of blood and a loud, furious roar. Jennifer shouted in surprise and fired as well. Two more shotgun shells seemed to put down...whatever it was.

"Is it...it sounded like a Demon," Jennifer said as she fed a few more shotgun shells into her weapon.

"It was," Jack murmured as he did the same. "But it was invisible...Christ, I thought McGee might have been cracking up or suffering from blood loss. But she wasn't. It's a fucking ghost."

"Spectre is a better name," Jennifer replied, her voice a little off-kilter. He glanced at her. She looked back at him. "What?"

"Nothing. You're right. Spectre is better. Come on, let's finish this up. This place is really starting to freak me out."

They pressed on, hurrying down the corridor until they reached its end and still finding nothing. Jack was about to give up hope and press on, when he saw something glinting softly in the light of one of the apartments.

"Watch my back," he whispered as he slid into the room, clearing it with a sweep of his shotgun. Nothing and no one.

The glint, he saw, was blue.

Jack moved over to it and crouched. Shoving some debris aside, mainly a few books, a cracked and dead PDA and some bloodstained clothing, he found it: the blue keycard. There were bloody fingerprints on it. Sighing in relief, though lamenting that this was only one third of what they needed, he pocketed and stepped back out into the main corridor.

"Got the blue keycard," he said as he started heading back. "Let's go see if Jenkins and Peterson had any luck."

They came back to the lobby and were stepping into it about the same time the other two Marines were. Jenkins had a look of triumph on his face. "Found the yellow and red keycards," he said, grinning broadly and patting his pocket.

"I found the blue one. Let's get this fucking show on the road," Jack replied, impatient to be reunited with the rest of his squad. As fun as it was playing Sergeant again, he wanted to pass the reigns over to someone else. He wasn't sure but he was beginning to suspect that he was a lot more screwed up by this whole thing that he thought. The fact of the matter was that his hands were trembling now and he felt sick to his stomach, not to mention his mind was starting to off on weird tangents every couple of minutes.

All bad signs of battle fatigue, or something like it.

The quartet headed for the door and slipped each of the keycards through the magnetic slot reader. This time, it chimed three times and, once they'd passed the final card through, chimed once more in a slightly different pitch.

The doors opened.

Jack found himself staring down a lengthy corridor.

Command Control awaited. He led the others into the corridor beyond very slowly. It was dark here, too. He didn't like it. Slowly, the quartet moved into the huge hallway beyond. It was broad and tall, looking like it was meant for a great deal of traffic. Now it was home to a great deal of corpses from both sides of the conflict.

"Keep a really sharp eye out," Jack murmured. "We ran into those ghosts McGee was mentioning. We call them Spectres. They're like the Demons, but almost totally invisible."

"Fuckin' great," Jenkins muttered miserably. "Like we didn't have enough to worry about."

Almost as soon as he'd let out the warning, Jack began to hear the meaty treads of a nearby Demon or Spectre. Considering he couldn't see anything, he figured a Spectre. The four of them froze up, each of them covering a different direction.

"There!" Jenkins suddenly called.

Jack spun and saw it, finally. The awful thing was close, really close. He raised his shotgun and pounded out a slug, spraying the area with a wave of blood. Under their combined assault, the creature wilted...and kept them from noticing a _second_ Spectre that had pounded right up to them while they'd been mowing down the first.

Peterson began to scream.

Jack spun around and stared in horror. The man's right arm, all the way up to his shoulder, was gone, disappearing into the Spectre's mouth. With an awful ripping sound and a thick, wet snap the creature finished biting his arm off. A tremendous spray of blood splashed the beast as Peterson fell shrieking to the floor, blood flowing freely now. The blood got all over the Spectre, rendering it at least partially visible.

Jack stuck the barrel into its mouth and pulled the trigger.

The thing's brains vaporized out of the back of its head in plume of dark red gore. Some of it sprayed onto his visor, which was already smeared with Peterson's blood. He called for the others to watch the area while he cleared his visor off to the best of his ability. When it was clear enough, he confirmed that they were alone again. Once they were, sighing, he moved over to Peterson, who was definitely dead from blood loss and shock. Frustrated, frightened and anxious, Jack patted the Marine down and distributed his ammo. He didn't have a whole hell of a lot on him and his only weapon, his pistol, was now down the Spectre's throat.

After pocketing only a single magazine for himself, Jack straightened up and marched off, leading a silent Jennifer and Jenkins away. A moment later, after moving down a smaller offshoot corridor, they found the infirmary they were looking for. McGee was on an examination table, trying unsuccessfully to clean some of her wounds.

"What the hell happened?" she asked. "I heard a lot of screaming."

"Peterson's dead. One of your ghosts ate his fucking arm," Jack replied.

"Fuck," she murmured.

"Here, let me help with that," Jennifer said, setting her shotgun down on an adjacent table and moving to help her.

"Jenkins, stay here, I'm going to check out the area," Jack said. He needed to be alone for a minute, needed to clear his head. Two fucking people down now because he wasn't paying close enough attention. He should've seen that goddamned Spectre coming a mile off, should've picked up on those extra set of feet, no matter that it was invisible. If this were anywhere, anywhen else, he'd have been on it.

But that was just the problem, this wasn't like anything he had ever faced down before. As much as he told his fellow Marines to treat this just like any other situation, any other battlefield...it wasn't. This was something completely new. Completely unique. They weren't fighting humans, they were fighting...demons. Or aliens. Or...genetic mutations. Or monsters. What _ever_ they were, they were horrifying.

Suddenly, Jack could see why the people here and the teams they'd sent up had all died. These things were just too much. But he didn't have a choice, he had to get over it, get used to it, or he was going to die a horrible, brutal, painful death. Sighing, Jack moved slowly along the hallway he'd found behind the infirmary, in front of a row of patient rooms. All but one of them was empty, and the one that wasn't empty, Jack wished it was. A man was hanging from the ceiling, having hung himself with a bedsheet.

Jack could see his nametag on his chest. It read **PVT. Murphy**.

He turned away from the body, ready to face the world again. He rejoined the others in the infirmary. McGee was just getting her armor back on. Before anyone could say anything, their radios crackled to life.

" _This is Sergeant Blackmore to anyone that can hear me. I need you to converge on my location in the control center. Over."_


	14. EPISODE 01: The View From Phobos

Jack was glad that he was no longer in charge of things.

Instead of leading, he was now following Corporal McGee as she led the way slowly up the spiraling staircase that led to the top of the control room. He was sure that it wasn't an accident that the control center of Command Control had been placed high up, above all else, to maintain that control over all of Phobos Base. After Blackmore's command, they'd promptly left the infirmary and quickly made it the rest of the way there to the control tower, only having to put down a few zombies and an Imp in passing.

Now he was wondering what was going to happen.

When he'd set out three and a half hours ago, (he was shocked to find that's how long it had been, though he honestly couldn't decide if it seemed too short or too long), taking Stanmore into the forsaken Hangar, he'd only had a vague idea of what to do. Finding survivors, hopefully finding Blackmore, and not a lot else. Fight, survive, kill bad guys if necessary. He'd kicked his way through the blood and the gunsmoke and now here he was. So now what? Well, obviously, follow the orders of the Sergeant.

But what would they do?

They seemed stuck here.

He hoped that Blackmore had a good plan.

They reached the top of the control tower and was both relieved and a little disappointed to see Sergeant Blackmore and PFC Baker waiting for them. He was glad to see them, but sad to see that Thompson wasn't with them.

"Ah, the gang's all here," Blackmore said, turning away from a screen to stare at them. Then he frowned. "I guess not. Report, Corporal."

Jack walked over to one of the windows while he listened to Corporal McGee run through a truncated version of recent events. From this high up and this far into the dual craters, Jack could now see the rest of Phobos Base. He ignored the Hangar, Nuclear Plant and Toxin Refinery. Instead, he turned his attention to the buildings he hadn't seen. This time around, he had a helpful map tacked to the wall of the base at large.

The structure in the middle, built into the wall where the two craters met and bridging them, was indeed Phobos Labs. It was a curious gray-green structure with four outer sections and one central, raised area, complete with weird yellow windows. It reminded him a little of a four-leaf clover. He could see three structures in a rough row in the next crater. The one to the far left was a strange construction of shapes that were stacked atop each other, forming a weird kind of tower with all sorts of attachments sticking out of it.

This was, apparently, the Computer Station.

The one in the middle was a bland, inert, gunmetal gray brick of a structure. Jack didn't need a map to tell him this was the Military Base. To the right was a broad platform that was mostly taken up by a few squat, square structures. The map labeled this as Central Processing, whatever the hell that meant. Finally, beyond all this, built partially into the crater wall itself, was a mostly obscured building that was simply called Phobos Anomaly.

What did _that_ mean?

Jack heard McGee reporting Stanmore and Peterson as dead. At this final bit of information, Blackmore turned to face him.

"Ward, you brought our pilot in here?" he asked.

"Yes, Sergeant," Jack replied, turning to face the man, ready to defend his decision if need be.

Blackmore, looking as tall and imposing as ever, scrutinized him for a moment, then nodded. "Well, that makes enough sense. No point in leaving him out there to take off on us and leave us stranded here," he said.

Jack felt relieved. When it came to men in control, there tended to be two types. The first were jacked up jackasses who were more obsessed with power than doing a good job. The second were good, decent men, brave men, who knew what the fuck they were doing. It was looking like Blackmore was that second variety.

"Now, McGee mentioned some kind of problem with the ship. Can you elaborate on that?" Blackmore asked.

"Not very much, I'm afraid, Sergeant. When I got to the ship, the engines were flaring, and it seemed like Stanmore had already tried to take off. But the ship wasn't going anywhere." He then related his theory that whatever strange field was interfering with the radios could possibly be screwing with the ships, too, backed up by the idea that the previous pilots hadn't left, even with something ripping its way into their ships.

"Hmm," Blackmore grumbled, turning slowly back to the screen he'd been studying earlier. "Well, I think this is as good as it's going to get. Thompson is missing. We haven't heard peep on the radio from him and we haven't found a body. I've been looking through some cameras from all over the base. A lot of them are out but one of them was intact enough to show that, unfortunately, our own ship has been damaged as well. By what, I'm not sure. Now, before we go any further, we need to share some intel. I need a complete list from all of you, an account as to the various...creatures, for want of a better word, you have encountered."

They all listed everything and Jenkins even piped up that Jack had started naming them. Much to his surprise, Blackmore accepted the names without hesitation, although Jack pointed out that Jennifer had named the Spectres. In the end, none of them had encountered anything new. They had their zombies, Imps, Demons, Lost Souls and Spectres now. Even as they listed them off, Jack wondered what other horrors awaited them on the dead moon.

"Okay, now that we've got that settled," Blackmore said, "we need a plan of action. I think the first, most rational course of action, is to call for help. It's a long shot, and I've already confirmed that the radio in Command Control is dead. But Phobos Labs has its own, self-contained, backup communications system. I figure that we should either confirm or eliminate this as a possibility before moving on to more desperate measures."

"Desperate measures?" Jack asked.

"It seems obvious that they were doing something shady up here, and I've been doing some digging around in the files here. All I've found so far is a lot of references to the Phobos Anomaly and experiments. So I'd say it's a safe bet that whatever the hell they were doing, it was over there. And I think it's also a safe bet that whatever this strange interference is, that's where it's coming from. So the next course of action would be to go there and disable it."

Jack nodded. It was a good plan. A rough, simple plan, but a good one. Complicated plans had a way of blowing up in your face. The simpler a plan was, the more likely it was to succeed. Mainly just because there were fewer things that could go wrong.

"Now," Blackmore said, calling up a map of Command Control on one of the larger, intact screens nearby. "While I dig around up here, I have jobs for you all. Baker, I want you to go with Jenkins to this infirmary and collect whatever medical supplies you can. Ward, Taylor, hit up this armory and grab whatever guns, ammo, grenades or explosives you can find and bring them back here. Grab whatever you can, I imagine it's going to get worse before it gets better."

 _If it gets better,_ Jack thought morosely.

"Corporal, you're going to be staying here and watching my ass so it doesn't get eaten while I dig out the UAC's godforsaken fucking secrets. I don't give a shit about classified and top secret anymore, I want to know what the fuck they were doing up here and what got so many goddamned good Marines killed."

There were a string of affirmative replies and they headed out.

* * *

Jack was probably feeling the best he'd felt since he had found out he was getting shipped up to Mars as he and Jennifer made their way down an anonymous chromed corridor. He was liking Blackmore even more now. He had backup, he had guns and ammo, he had a clear mission. This was a great way to operate. Plus, he had Jennifer around him again. Jack hadn't exactly done well for relationships for a few years…

Okay, that was a lie.

Jack had _never_ done well for relationships. He'd gotten kind of decent at flings and fuck buddies, but that wasn't the same. In the Marines, he'd at least been around the kind of women he tended to like: tough, assertive, independent. Plus, they were all fit and a lot of them had tattoos. Tats were fucking hot for some reason.

But it was those same qualities, combined with their job as Marines in a world that was basically constantly at war with itself now, that made them not interested in long term relationships. Not to mention, having a long term relationship was basically impossible nowadays. He was never anywhere for more than three months.

Jennifer seemed to be something else. In their short time together, he'd pieced together that she was smart, strong, brave, humble. Sure, she'd made a mistake and the consequences had been dire, but everyone made mistakes and sometimes they blew up spectacularly. He didn't think she'd made the wrong call. He'd never know for sure, because he hadn't been there, but his instincts told him that Jennifer was a good Marine.

It was just bad luck, not necessarily a bad call.

Somewhere up ahead, a zombie groaned. Jack came out of his head, pistol in hand, ready for action. He and Jennifer moved slowly down the corridor they were in, coming up to a corner where the hallway terminated in a T junction. The sounds were coming from the left. Jack put his back to the wall and waited, listening, trying to judge their distance. They didn't sound too close...he peered cautiously around the corner.

Three zombies were strung out along the next corridor. He indicated as much to Jennifer, then stepped out and took aim. The first one was facing away from him and he watched the back of its head cave in as his well-aimed pistol round punched through it. The thing went down like a bag of bricks. The next one was facing to the right and its head snapped away as a second round zipped straight through its temple.

The third zombie, however, wore fatigues and was holding a pistol. It was facing him. In the time he'd been taking to put down the other two, this one had time to aim and fire. Jack grunted and groaned in pain as he felt the round punch him right in the chestplate. Jennifer took the opportunity to aim and fire, putting a round through its eye.

"You okay?" she asked, scanning the immediate area while he cautiously probed the site of the bullet impact.

"Fine," he replied. "Gonna have a big damned bruise, though." He was glad to see that the armor was worth its weight, though he knew that much from when he'd taken a fireball to the chest, but he didn't want to keep testing it. Eventually, it would fail the test. Again, he lamented that he didn't have some of that sweet blue combat armor. But beggars couldn't be choosers. He was just glad to have _any_ armor right now.

The pair of them made their way down the corridor, ignoring the corpses for the moment. No need to scrounge around in the mud and blood for dirty bullets if there was a whole armory waiting for them. Although Jack had his doubts about just how much of that armory was actually left. If it turned out to be a bust, they could snag the ammo in passing. If there even was any. He was hating having to search all these ugly, smelly corpses.

As they approached the security checkpoint that would grant them access to the armory, Jack heard something new. A crackling sound, like an open flame. Frowning, the sound set of alarm bells in his head and he stopped, holstering his pistol and switching over to his shotgun. He didn't know why that sound freaked him out so much but every nerve ending in his body was screaming at him. He looked nervously at Jennifer.

"Where's that coming from?" he whispered.

"Somewhere up ahead," she replied, seeming uncomfortable with his reaction. "It's just a fire...right?" she replied.

"I'm not sure. Stay here."

He moved forward before she could respond, coming up to another junction, this one a four-way intersection that sported a water cooler, some couches and a few tables and potted plants. Jack quickly checked the other corridors. The sound was closer now. As he was looking down the left corridor, his heart leaped into his throat.

A Lost Soul!

It had floated out into the corridor from a nearby room and was just turning and noticing him. _That's_ why he'd freaked the fuck out. As soon as it saw him, the thing let out a strange shrieking hiss and began coming right for him. Letting out a startled shout, Jack snapped the shotgun up and fired before he was even consciously aware of having done so. The slug shell hit it dead on and popped it like a malignant balloon, spraying the corridor in a rain of tinkling bone fragments. He quickly checked his six and three o'clocks, but nothing else waited for him. He turned and quickly made his way back to Jennifer, who was waiting impatiently for him in front of the security checkpoint that would grant them access to the armory.

"Lost Soul," he explained.

Jennifer shuddered. "Still haven't seen any of the nasty things," she replied.

"You don't want to."

He tried the door and was grateful to find it open. Blackmore said he'd unlock the rooms they were going to and the man had come through. Stepping into the office area beyond, he did a quick sweep of the area, saw only a single corpse laid up beneath a desk and moved to the door at the back of the room. The armory.

It wasn't as big as he had hoped, but it also wasn't as empty as he had feared.

"Jackpot," Jennifer said, grinning broadly.

They each found a backpack and began stuffing it with magazines and shotgun shells. They were those big, military grade, fuck-off kind of backpacks with lots of pockets and a huge carrying capacity. Jack thought he was in love. This was going to be very helpful. Although there weren't any grenades, explosives or heavy weapons, he did manage to locate himself a brand new weapon. One of those beautiful DX-33 'Raptor' Submachine Guns. They packed thirty round magazines of nine millimeter ammo and came with a neat little digital scope. Their inability to be silenced or switch forms of fire left something to be desired, but they were more than suitable for the kind of work that Jack was finding himself doing.

He finished stuffing bullets and shells into his pack and between him and Jennifer, they cleared that damned armory out, managing to find a few more pistols to boot. As Jack turned to leave while Jennifer did one last sweep of the area, he let out a startled shout and snapped his SMG up. A zombie was stumbling into the room, reaching for him. He realized that it was the same corpse he'd seen up under the desk.

Squeezing the trigger, Jack stitched a bloody line of holes up the thing's torso to its head, practically splitting its skull in half. The zombie crashed to the floor and Jack caught his breath. "God _damn..._ that thing scared the shit outta me," he whispered.

"I didn't hear it," Jennifer muttered. "Is it just me or are they getting smarter?"

"They are. When I first encountered them, they couldn't use guns or weapons of any kind. Now they can. One of them fucking shot me..." Before he could ruminate any further on the subject, his radio crackled to life.

" _This is Jenkins to anyone...zzt...eed help! Fuckin' things...zzt...fimary!"_

"We're on our way, Jenkins!" Jack shouted.

He and Jennifer raced out of the room.

* * *

They rushed back through the blood and chrome corridors. Everywhere he looked, Jack could see that damned UAC logo stamped over and over again. He hadn't really thought about it since wandering the halls of Mars City, but now he was noticing them more than ever and it was bugging him. The UAC had fucked up big time here and gotten hundreds of people killed. Maybe more. Jack suddenly wondered what the situation was on Deimos. He kept going, jogging alongside Jennifer, SMG in hand, ready for action.

They heard gunfire as they passed the halfway mark that was the entrance to the control tower and kept on running. Jack heard broken shouting over the radio and he was trying to determine if it was pain or pleasure, agony or the thrill of combat. As the seconds bled by, sometimes he thought one way, somethings he thought another. As they rounded another corner, Jack caught sight of a pair of big, dark pink bodies, stomping down the corridor, away from them. Towards the infirmary. The pair opened fire. Jennifer's shotgun boomed and Jack's SMG coughed up round after round, spraying their backs with red hot metal death.

The creatures immediately turned around and Jack felt a jolt of fear startle through him as he found himself once again staring into those golden glowing eyes, into that immense maw. As he emptied the magazine and put down one of the ugly fuckers, spraying the second with gore as its own face was messily disassembled by a pair of well-placed shotgun blasts courtesy Jennifer, Jack thought about something he'd heard once.

There was this theory, he thought it might have something to do with some guy named Jung, (people said it 'Young'), he said that there were certain images that the brain automatically responded to with fear. Images of spiders, for example. Or dark, armless, hooded figures. Or maybe it was all complete crap and he was totally misremembering it. But he thought that those faces, those twisted, animal, cruel, demonic faces called to something deep and primal inside of his brain, something buried in the way down.

A manifestation of pure terror.

Jack ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in. Those two Demons put down, Jack and Jennifer sprinted the rest of the way. The door to the infirmary was wide open and inside, Jenkins and Baker were fighting for their lives. Half a dozen Imps had invaded and were battering them with fireballs. Jennifer got the first shot off between the two of them and blew the head off of an Imp clearly. Jack watched its big, weirdly shaped skull fragment and come apart, turning into a chunky plume of deep red gore.

He turned his own weapon on another one and stitched a bloody line of bullets up its back, sending it toppling forward as he did enough damage and killed the ugly thing. Between the four of them, they managed to put down the rest of the Imps, as well as a pair of zombies and another Demon that had wandered in, drawn by the noise.

After a long moment of silence, Jenkins was the first to speak. "Thanks," he said, the word coming out in a tight breath.

"Happy to help," Jack replied, reloading his last magazine. Well, last one on his person and not in the backpack.

He was really liking this Raptor. It didn't have the power or punch of a shotgun, but it was a lot nicer than the pistol. Being able to throw a wave of bullets at the bad guys was a satisfying luxury, but he knew he had to keep himself under control. He felt like a poor man who'd won the lottery after raiding that armory, but the bullets wouldn't last forever. In fact, he was sure he'd be shocked by how quickly they went.

He and Jennifer helped the other two clear out the infirmary. They only managed to put together a pair of Stimpacks and a Medikit from the salvageable supplies leftover in the wrecked, bloody room. Once that was done, they all hurried back to the control tower and regrouped with Blackmore and McGee.

"Good work, Marines," Blackmore said as he looked through the backpacks Jack and Jennifer had recovered. "Let's divvy this up and then we'll head out. Sooner we can get to Phobos Labs, the better," he added quietly.

They spent a few minutes going over all the supplies, dividing it up amongst themselves. Even with all the ammo they'd found, Jack only managed to get another two magazines for his Raptor, though he did manage to get enough shells to fully load up and another two full loads in reserve. So that felt pretty great.

Once that was all done, Blackmore put Jack on point.

And they headed out, onwards to Phobos Labs.


	15. EPISODE 01: Phobos Labs

Phobos Labs started out bad.

As soon as he stepped off the tram, a solid wave of stench hit him. It wasn't blood or death or spilled guts. It was burning, an acrid smell, a caustic thing that invaded his sinuses and ate right up into his brain. His eyes watered up and that nearly got him killed, because as he was trying to get his sight back, a bullet scorched by overhead.

"Down!" Jennifer called, and he dropped to one knee, giving her access to whatever stupid bastard had thrown a bullet his way.

As he activated his suit's filters, which didn't cut the smell out completely but made it somewhat more manageable, he raised his SMG and found himself staring at what he at first took as a human in black armor. Whoever it was, they were covered head-to-toe in the metallic stuff and they moved like a human.

"Stop shooting! We're not zombies!" Jack called.

The man, or woman, whoever, acted like they hadn't heard. The black armored foe, wielding a pistol, continued opening fire on them. Jennifer punched a round through their visor and shattered it in a spray of glass and gore.

"Who the fuck was that?!" McGee snapped.

"God, what's that _smell?_ " Jenkins groaned.

"Shut up!" Blackmore barked. "Ward, Taylor, get out there, see who that is. We'll cover you," he ordered.

Both of them left the relative safety of the tram, coming out onto the platform, which was bathed in a broken light that flickered every now and then. They moved slowly across the platform, checking the shadows and corners for hostiles, but they seemed to be alone.

"Check it," Jennifer whispered.

Jack nodded and moved forward, crouching by the body. He disengaged the helmet. He'd never seen a design of armor like this before. As the helmet came away, he gasped, dropping it. The features of a zombie were staring up at him.

"Report," Blackmore called.

"It's a zombie," Jack replied.

"Shit," Jennifer whispered. "Where the hell did these fuckers come from!? It moved like a human!"

Before anyone could respond, the main door that led into Phobos Labs suddenly opened up. Three more troopers in black armor rushed into the room. Two of them held pistols, one held a shotgun. The shotgun barked and Jack heard glass shattering somewhere behind him. He immediately began backing up and opening fire at the same time. He managed to tag one of them in the neck with his SMG. It went down long enough for someone to score a hit through its visor. Jack managed to get back to a stack of storage crates, where he knelt. The others were firing at the zombies from back in the tram. Jennifer had gone the opposite direction.

Another three of the dark armor clad assholes stepped in.

Three of them began advancing on Jack and the tram, while the other two headed for Jennifer, who had made it to a maintenance closet on the opposite side of the platform. What were these things!? How could the zombies get this smart this fast!? No time for that. Jack hosed the trio advancing on him down, emptying the magazine in his Raptor and then falling back. It seemed to do the trick. They were distracted enough to be put down under a rain of fire from the tram. Jack switched to his shotgun and stepped out.

"Hold fire!" he shouted as he rushed across the tram platform.

He got to the pair of zombies, which were still facing away from him, and leveled his shotgun at the back of the first's head. He squeezed the trigger. The slug shell fucking demolished its head, helmet and all. Everything above the neck disappeared in a plume of gore. While the first was still falling, he readjusted his aim, cocked the gun and repeated the process. Both zombies tumbled, headless, to the floor.

Jack spun around and faced the door they'd all come through, waiting. Phobos Base seemed to be holding its breath. A few seconds passed. Nothing else came through the door. A few more seconds passed. Jack made quick hand signals to Jennifer and she joined him back on the platform. They moved cautiously up to the door, covering it, and checked it out. The lobby beyond was vacant, and it also explained where the godawful stench was coming from. There'd been some kind of toxic spill. A glowing green liquid created a miniature river across the center of the lobby, lengthwise. They'd have to jump it if they wanted to get over it.

"Clear," Jack said.

"Everyone okay?" Blackmore asked.

"No..."

Jack glanced back. Jenkins was on his knees, clutching his stomach. His gloves were bloody. "Aw shit," he muttered. "You got it here?" he asked.

Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, go."

Jack jogged back across the platform and stepped into the tram. Baker was checking out the wound. "Punched right through your armor," she muttered. "Bullet's still in there." She shook her head, looked up at Blackmore. "I need to get him to an infirmary, to see if any of his organs have been hit. I don't think so, but if I'm not sure, he could die."

Blackmore seemed to consider it for a moment, then he nodded tightly. "Ward, help Baker get him to the nearest infirmary. There should be a sign posted in the lobby. Everyone else with me. We're gonna strip these guys for ammo and then proceed straight to the core. I want into that tower," he said, looking around at them.

Jack didn't like splitting up, but he supposed they didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. He helped Jenkins to his feet.

"Here, hold still," Baker said, taking off the man's helmet. "This'll help with the pain, get you to focus." Before Jenkins could react, Baker stuck him in the neck with something. Jenkins hissed in pain and looked ready to punch the medic as Baker tossed away the needle and secured the man's helmet again. "Thank me later," she said.

"What's the opposite of thank you?" Jenkins growled. "Pretty sure it still ends with you."

Jack chuckled. "Come on, we need to get a move on."

The three of them left the tram, passing by Blackmore and McGee, who were policing up the ammo from the corpses, and Jennifer, who was standing guard by the door. She gave him a tight nod and wished him luck.

He hated to be apart from her again.

No choice in the matter. They had a job to do, even as fucked as the situation was, they still had objectives to complete. Jack took in the ruined state of the lobby as he led the way. The two security kiosks were shot to shit. This lobby seemed different from the others. There was just one door, dead ahead, and no entrance desk. This must be an extra layer of security, Jack reasoned. There was only one way to go, so he went.

He took a running jump and managed to make it over the spill. Whoever the hell had decided to store this many barrels of toxic crap in the entrance lobby to Phobos Base was a moron. He moved over to the door while Baker and, (painfully), Jenkins leaped over the glowing green slime. They moved through the next door, which admitted them to a larger, even more open area. In the center was a familiar circular desk, but there were no doors, just five large openings leading dead ahead and to the left and right.

Jack spotted a pair of more familiar zombies hanging out inside the circular desk. Neither appeared to be armed, so he raised his SMG, took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Cursing, he realized with a flash that he'd forgotten to reload. Frustrated, he let the SMG hang, pulled out his pistol and capped both of them, then quickly holstered the pistol, ejected the spent mag of his SMG and slapped a fresh one in. How could he forget something so basic!? It was such a goddamned fucking rookie mistake.

He didn't have time to bask in his own fury at himself, as a shotgun blast seared by and buried itself in the desk.

"Hostiles!" Baker shouted. "Left side!"

But the shotgun blast had come from the right. Cursing, Jack finished his reload and spun right, spying another pair of those black armored assholes, as well as a Demon stomping up behind them. He opened fire while strafing back the way he'd come, trying to find some cover. He was too exposed out here. He managed to shatter the visor of one of the creeps, trying to also keep tabs on whatever was happening behind him by sound alone and trusting Baker and Jenkins to take care of it. As he drew a bead on the second zombie, something interesting happened.

The Demon reached the zombie. Jack expected it to make its way around the zombie, but it either didn't have the mental capacity for such basic problem solving skills or, more likely, it didn't give a shit who or what was in its way. It bumped into the zombie with a growl, which caused it to immediately turn around and opened fire, pouring half a magazine of red hot death into the pink thing's gaping maw.

Jack watched in amazement as the Demon went down. He rewarded the victor of that little skirmish with a spray of lead to the back, putting the thing down. Turning around, he saw that Baker and Jenkins had cleared up their side of the resistance: a trio of Imps. Once he saw the immediate area was clear, Jack moved over to the two corpses he'd produced and patted them down. One of them didn't have shit and from the other he managed to salvage just a single magazine for his pistol. Sighing, he straightened up.

"You guys will never guess what I just saw," he said.

"What?" Jenkins asked. Baker was studying the area.

Jack pocketed the magazine. "Two of them just turned on each other. A zombie just killed a Demon," he replied.

"No way," Jenkins replied. He seemed to be doing better. Whatever Baker had forced on him must be working well.

"Yep."

"Come on, guys. Infirmary is this way," Baker said, pointing down the direction Jack had been fighting in. Jack took one more look around before following. All of the side tunnels led out and away, curving out of sight. The one dead ahead ended very abruptly in a huge door that looked very firmly closed and locked.

Of course, Jack was sure that that's where they were going to have to get into.

Sighing, he headed off after Baker and Jenkins down the other path. From what he remembered from his look at the map, Phobos Labs had four wings on it, coming out from a central core, which was where they would ultimately need to get into. They were heading down the bottom right wing, towards the infirmary.

It was, mercifully, near the end of the large corridor they were in, and not all that far away. They managed to make it there without running into any more hostiles. Jack swept the area with his SMG as Baker got the door open and cleared the room beyond.

"Clear," he called.

Jenkins disappeared into the door and Jack moved in after them. He closed and secured the door behind them. When he turned around, Jack got his first real look at the infirmary: it was a bloody mess. The storm that had ripped through Phobos Base had hit this place particularly hard. Blood had been spilled so violently that it stained the ceiling. Examination tables were dented and damaged, and some of the larger pieces of medical equipment bled blue-white sprays of sparks periodically. The floor was covered in blood, bodies and medical supplies.

"Hell of a mess," Jenkins murmured as Baker led him over to the most intact looking examination table left.

"Lay down," Baker said.

While the medic tended to the situation, Jack moved around the infirmary. He wanted to check out the back rooms, as he had spied a trio of doors along the walls. Blood squelched under his heavy boots as he crossed the room. The first one turned out to be an office that was mostly untouched, save for an overturned chair and a few bullets that had found their way inside and buried themselves in the wall. He moved on to the next room, finding a storage area that was also basically undisturbed. Almost secure now.

Jack moved on to the third door. He opened it up and stepped slowly inside, seeing a room of white tiles, a bathroom and a shower area. There was a hell of a lot of blood in here, and-

He screamed as something shrieked and jumped him from the side. Whatever it was, it was a _heavy_ son of a bitch and he crashed to the filthy floor, SMG flying from his hands. Jack managed to get onto his back, thrashing violently, and found himself staring up at one of the awful Imp creatures. It snapped its big yellow razor teeth right in front of his visor. He heard movement somewhere else and figured Baker was coming to help him out, but he already had a plan. Barely managing to shove up with his left forearm into its chest, he grabbed his pistol from its holster, put the barrel against its stomach and began squeezing the trigger.

Jack screamed as he emptied the magazine into the awful thing, blowing a gory hole through its stomach and splattering its alien guts all over the place. The beast let out a prolonged shriek that was louder than the gunshots and nearly blew out his eardrums. As the gun clicked empty, it died and fell against him.

"Little help?" he asked.

The thing had to weight three hundred pounds.

"I got it," Baker said. Suddenly, the weight was rolled off of him. Gasping to get his breath back, Jack sat up and shakily reloaded.

"Goddamn," he muttered, ejecting the spent mag and slipping a new one in. "I hate those damned things."

"Don't blame you, you okay?" Baker asked.

Jack checked himself over, but other than some bruising, he seemed to be okay. "Yeah...yeah. I'm fine," he said, getting to his feet. "Um...I'll be okay. See to Jenkins."

"All right," Baker said, giving him one last, appraising look before disappearing from the bathroom. Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Too close. Way too close. He looked down at the corpse he'd made.

Damn, he'd nearly blown the thing in half.

Getting control of himself, he retrieved his SMG and then carefully cleared the rest of the bathroom. There was nothing and no one hiding in the stalls, though he did find a severed head in one of the urinals. There was something almost darkly comedic about the sight. Finishing his search, Jack returned to the main room.

"How's he doing?" he asked, taking a seat, glad for a chance to rest.

"He'll live," Baker grunted. "Getting the bullet out now."

"You've got a touch like an elephant _-ow!_ " Jenkins snapped.

"There we go," she said, holding up the remains of a bullet with what looked like a pair of needle-nose pliers. She dropped it on the floor. "Now, quit bitching and let me patch you up."

Jenkins groaned and groused, but mostly held his peace. Baker cleaned the wound, then patched it up tight, then injected him a few times and had him put his armor back on.

"All right, the stuff I gave you should hold up pretty well. It's a foaming agent. Even so, be careful. Don't move any more than necessary. I also gave you a shot of painkillers and antibiotics and anti-virals. You should be fine."

"Thanks, doc," Jenkins replied, getting his gear back on.

Jack activated his radio. "Sergeant, we've patched up Jenkins, how's things on your end? Over," he asked.

" _Not good. The control core is locked down tight and the only way we're getting in is by releasing four manual locks. There's one at the end of each wing. You should be near one of them. Look for rooms marked SEC and then a number. You'll be handling SEC three and four. We'll take care of the other two. Out,"_ Blackmore replied.

"Wonderful," Jack muttered, getting up and checking over his gear again. He looked over at Baker. She was already moving to a nearby terminal and firing it up. A moment later, she had a map of the immediate area on the screen. "There, we aren't far from the first one," she said. Jack and Jenkins joined her and studied the screen.

She was right, it was basically down the corridor.

"Well, let's get it started," Jack replied, turning and heading back across the infirmary. He was glad to be leaving the room.

It had kind of an evil feel to it. He opened the door and cautiously checked out the area beyond. The main corridor remained empty. They hurried down the rest of its length and came to the security center at the end of the main passageway. Jack glanced out a window as they passed by it. He found himself staring at the vast, gray desolation of Phobos and suddenly wondered what could survive out there besides the Lost Souls.

He shuddered. Those things were seriously creepy.

They breached the security station, finding it to be a bit larger and more intricate than the simple kiosks they'd been searching so far. Jack took in the battered and bloodied state of the area, the broken screens and dead bodies spread out across the metal floor, the spent shell casings everywhere. They crunched beneath his boots. As he looked over the ruined area, his eyes came to rest on a lone mug that had _Live for the Weekend_ stenciled across it and he felt his sanity slip a notch. He wasn't entirely sure why, but it hit something deep and hard inside of him.

Maybe it was the nature of the universe, of reality, itself.

It was something he had been wrestling with for his entire life. He had seen situations go from happy to hell in no time flat far too many times, and often there was no warning. The most he'd been able to do was become a Marine, train himself, get in shape, sharpen up his reflexes and reaction time. But even putting all that aside, how many people here had just been regular people, wanting to just get by? Life was hard enough as it was, even just getting through the day sometimes, without the threat of hellish chaos looming on the horizon.

He looked at one of the corpses as Baker set to work lifting the lockout, her boots squelching loudly in the abysmal silence, and wondered who this man had been before. What were his hopes? His dreams? His fears? His favorite color and breakfast? How were his relationships with his family? A thousand questions came and went and he knew that none of it mattered because he was no longer a person, he was an object.

A stiff, still thing on the metal deckplates of a forgotten security station in a blood-drenched facility on Phobos.

Jack shook himself, trying hard to get a grip. He'd had small crises like this before, though none quite this powerful. His brain was under serious stress and the slightest thing could send it spiraling out of control. And it was worse because this situation was so far beyond the pale of crazy shit he'd put up with before that he still didn't really know how to deal with it. He supposed, as he reigned in control, there was just one thing he could do.

Keep going.

"Got it," Baker said, standing up. "Let's go."

They left the security center and quickly made their way back down the central corridor. Jack's eyes drifted to a variety of closed doorways they were passing by. He couldn't help but wonder what horrors were hidden behind each. He was glad to be passing them by. They reached the main entrance area again about the same time the others did. Each group nodded to each other in passing as they moved along to take care of their own objectives. Soon, Jack found himself leading the trio down another huge metal passageway.

This one was definitely different. Probably the most obvious difference was the fact that it ended at about half the length of the previous corridor. At least the way between here and there was clear. Jack couldn't help but feel that something was waiting for them. He readjusted his grip on the SMG as they made the final approach on the door. Making quick hand signals to the other two, he had them move over to the left side while he took up position on the opposite side. The door was large and steel, shining brightly beneath the lights.

Jack hit the access button.

The door slid quickly up into the ceiling. He peered cautiously around, then snapped out a curse and fell back as a round scorched by his helmet, nearly ending his life.

"Hostiles!" he snapped. "Those black armored zombies. I think there's around a dozen in there," he said.

"On it," Baker replied. She leaned out, aimed and fired, then pulled back. Jack heard one of the things go down and as he leaned out and mimicked Baker's actions, putting down one of the dark-clad enemies, he began to feel a bit better. _This_ was something he understood. This kind of warfare was something he'd trained for, dealt with and lived for years now. He leaned out and sighted another one. They were spread out across the room beyond, which appeared to be some kind of research bay. The room was pretty large, at least fifty meters across, with rounded sides. The floor was dotted with workstations, terminals and huge pieces of equipment that he couldn't even begin to guess the functionality of.

The armored zombies were scattered across this huge bay, taking shelter behind the workstations and equipment. Jack had to give it to them: they were pretty skilled at combat. They were also seriously creepy, and now that he was around them again, he began to hear them talking to each other. They spoke in deep, guttural voices and...after a moment, he realized that they weren't speaking English. He had no idea what language they were speaking but it was almost demonic. He emptied the rest of his current magazine, managing to tag another one of them, then pulled back around and swapped it out for a pistol.

The SMG was spent. He needed to scavenge more ammo for it.

As he leaned around again, he saw something brand new happening. Behind the zombies, a door was being forced open by sheer, brute strength. Even as he watched, it burst open to admit a half-dozen Demons. The huge, shaved gorillas began stomping into the room. Inspiration struck and he aimed for their general cluster and emptied the magazine into them. This had the desired effect as they descended on the zombies in a murderous rage.

"Hold fire!" he called, crouching and watching intently.

The zombies, now being attacked from the rear, spun around and opened fire on the Demons. The battle raged for about two solid minutes. Jack watched one Demon march right up to a zombie, knock its gun aside, grab the former human and bite down hard, taking his head, helmet and all, clean off. The body stumbled away, hands clutching reflexively for the one who had killed it, then crashed to the deckplates in a widening pool of blood.

Another pair of zombies converged fire on another Demon and the two streams of SMG rounds punched straight through its hideous face and burst the back of its head in a plume of dark gore. The fighting went back and forth, but in the end the zombies managed to win out. Though at terrible cost to themselves. By the time the last Demon fell, there were only two zombies left, and they were quickly put down by Jack and the others.

"Okay, let's get to it," he said, coming out after ensuring there were no further surprises.

They moved hastily across the lab, navigating across the battlefield and in between the ruined terminals and sparking equipment. Within five minutes, they'd located the second security centered, cleared it and raised the lockout.

"Sergeant Blackmore, we've completed our objectives. Over," Jack said as they began making their way back to the central room.

" _Affirmative, Ward. Same on our end. Converge back at the lobby. Out,"_ Blackmore replied.

Jack let out a soft sigh. Progress.

They were making real progress now.

* * *

"Aw, horseshit!" Blackmore snapped, kicking one of the swivel chairs and sending it flying across the room.

Jack understood how he felt.

They'd managed to make it into the control center of Phobos Labs...and found that it was pretty much trashed. No big surprise there. It looked like someone had gone on a shooting spree. In fact, Jack was beginning to suspect that perhaps the zombies had come through and ruined as much of the equipment as they could, intentionally. Now there was an awful thought. Despite this, they'd persevered and Blackmore had had McGee, who had extensive communications training, get to work on the comms array and figure out how bad the situation was.

Apparently, it was pretty bad.

McGee had just reported that the comms array was damaged.

"How do we fix it?" Blackmore asked, reigning in his temper.

"We have to get to the communications tower itself...which is on the surface," McGee replied. She sighed and stood up from the computer she'd been checking out. "However, if you can get me there, I can fix it."

Blackmore nodded slowly. "Fine. Ward, Taylor, gear up. The four of us are going out there and fixing this damned thing," he said, looking at Jack and Jennifer.

Jack suppressed a sigh.

Could this day possibly get any worse?


	16. EPISODE 01: Failure to Communicate

There was a part of Jack that thought that he would be...well, thrilled wasn't exactly the right word, but, to some degree, looking forward to going outside. Even if 'outside' was airless, frozen dead space, surely it was better than being inside the bloodied chromium corridors of Phobos Base, trapped with ravenous beasts and insane cannibals. Except, he reflected as he stood in the airlock with Sergeant Blackmore, waiting for it to complete its cycle, he was not looking forward to what was coming next. If anything, he was afraid.

The pair of them were heading outside first, to make sure the area was secure. According to the plan they'd concocted, (it was so simple it could hardly be called such), they wouldn't have to go all that far. The airlock would let them out about fifty meters from the auxiliary communications tower, which was built on a small rise of land. It was supposed to be a stable, easily-defended piece of land. And they were hoping they didn't have to defend it at all. Not that Jack had any hope of that. He focused up.

The airlock completed its cycle.

The doors slid open in absolute silence.

Jack once more found himself staring out over the dead, gray surface of Phobos. He couldn't see anything in the immediate vicinity, so he and Blackmore stepped out, each of them clearing their side of the area.

" _We're clear,"_ Blackmore reported.

Jack continued surveying the area while the other two cycled through the airlock. The lights along the exterior of the base pushed back the heavy darkness, but only so much. There wasn't a whole lot in this area, though he could see the comms tower ahead of them and, even farther away he could just make out the dark bulk of the other structures they had yet to investigate. They were ringed by brilliant lights. Jack was hoping they wouldn't have to go any further. They would fix the radio, call for help and wait for the retraction team.

And that would be that.

Jack wasn't a coward and he didn't like to run from a fight but...this was insane. The other two finished cycling through and they did another sweep of the area before beginning their trek across the surface. They moved at as brisk a pace as they could manage, their muzzle-mounted flashlights activated, punching holes in the gloomy darkness. Jack didn't particularly feel comfortable with all that light telegraphing their position from a mile off, but the light here was poor and they didn't really have any other choice.

The silence was ominous and total. All he could hear was his own breathing and the rumble of his heartbeat or the occasional sound over the comms channel. As he continued searching the darkness, Jack found his mind wandering. He wasn't sure if it was the horror of the situation or if he was actually a lot lonelier than he thought, but his thoughts immediately turned to Jennifer. It wasn't just that she was great in bed or that they got along really well in the limited time they'd enjoyed together, it was something more complicated.

He really liked her, and he lamented his current situation because if things had continued the way they'd been rolling along, he would have more than likely pursued a real relationship with her. There was a simple but powerful certainty to her, and he'd always been attracted to women like that. Women who, even if they might be in a shit situation or facing down something terrifying, they persevered and got the job done.

Jack snapped back to reality as he thought he saw something. They were almost to the comms tower. As he slid his flashlight beam across the surrounding area, he saw that the terrain was fairly rocky and uneven.

A lot of places for enemies to hide.

They made their way up the rise of land and came to the comms tower. It seemed to be clear, although it was obvious that someone had been here at some point. The tower itself was a cold steel monolith of metal and technology, rising a good three stories into the airless sky. It was built onto a twenty by twenty square platform that had concrete barriers along its perimeter. Jack frowned as they finished following a simple path that looked like it had been steamrolled, and came at last to the platform.

This place was almost designed as if the creators had a battle in mind.

Exactly how much had they known?

With these disturbing thoughts in mind, Jack led the way up onto the platform and checked it out, moving slowly around the tower, playing his flashlight across the area. Still nothing. He could see signs of tampering, a few panels along the base of the tower were open and occasionally spat blue-white sparks.

" _See what we're working with here, McGee,"_ Blackmore said.

" _On it,"_ she replied, moving quickly across the platform and crouching at the base of the communications tower.

" _Secure the area,"_ Blackmore ordered.

Jack moved over to one side of the platform, playing his light across the landscape once more, hunting for hostiles out there in the darkness. This whole place put him on edge. The knowledge that there were only a few centimeters of fabric and armor between him and a painful, frozen death was really starting to get to him. There was nothing out there but a silent, pockmarked gray landscape of craters and hills, and…

The light hesitated as it fell on something. Some kind of dark movement.

"I think-" Jack began and then let out a startled warning shout as one of those dark armored zombies popped up from behind one of the rocks. It opened fire on him, holding a pistol. The round sparked silently off of the concrete barrier in front of him.

" _Contacts on the left side, too!"_ Blackmore reported.

Jack took aim with his own pistol and fired. The first shot was sure and true, hitting the faceless horror right in its faceplate and shattering it. The inhuman monster disappeared from sight as it fell slowly back to the surface. He didn't have long to enjoy his initial victory because suddenly, half a dozen of the bastards popped up from their hiding spots. And they'd brought company! Four Lost Souls rose from behind the rocks and hills, burning impossibly in the dead space, coming towards him. Cursing, Jack shifted his aim.

"Lost Souls!" he called.

He began popping off shots and managed to cap one of the impossible horrors. It must have been a lucky shot, because the thing burst into a spray of bleached bone that fell slowly to the surface. The others swam towards him through the open space as the zombies plinked away at him. Cursing, Jack crouched, took aim and kept up his fire. He emptied his pistol and managed to bring down to more of the Lost Souls.

The final one was dangerously close now.

Jack dropped his pistol and managed to snap his shotgun up into play. He squeezed the trigger and hit the final flying skull dead on and almost point blank. The slug shell demolished the creature, blowing it away in a miniature explosion. Letting out a sigh of relief, Jack then cursed as a round scorched past, nearly puncturing his suit. He crouched, let his shotgun hang and hastily reloaded his pistol. He ducked his head as one of the zombies that had made it closer opened fire on him again, then popped up and fired.

Two shots took it in the chest and then the neck. Apparently, zombies needed to breathe, because this one dropped its gun and started clawing at its throat. Not dead yet, but out of the game. He shifted and fired again, then again, emptying another magazine in as calm and controlled a manner as he could manage, and put down the others.

Jack remained crouched as he reloaded, then peered cautiously over the edge of the concrete barriers. He didn't see anything else moving out there.

"Clear right," he reported.

" _Clear left,"_ Jennifer said.

" _Clear forward. Ward, check the back,"_ Blackmore replied.

"Yes, Sergeant." Jack moved low and fast across the platform to the back, the way they'd come from, and scoped the situation out. He didn't see anything moving. After a moment, he reported back. "We're clear," he said.

" _Good. McGee, where are we on those repairs?"_ Blackmore asked.

" _Getting there,"_ McGee replied.

" _All right...Ward, Taylor, head out there, gather whatever ammo you can. One of you watch the other,"_ Blackmore said. _"I'll maintain overwatch from up here."_

"Yes, Sergeant," they both replied, and then headed out.

They took Jack's side first and moved carefully among the rocks. The next several minutes passed in stark silence. They took turns guarding each other while they patted down the corpses. Most of them were under equipped. They managed to police up several magazines for pistols, a handful of shotgun shells and a few more mags for the SMG, which Jack took half of and added to his own inventory after giving the rest to Blackmore when they got back, who was the only other one among them who had an SMG.

He reloaded his own SMG and frowned. He only had one spare mag in reserve now, but he supposed it was better than nothing. Since he was doing decently with shells, he gave whatever he'd gathered to Jennifer.

" _Okay,"_ McGee said suddenly. _"I did it. It's fixed. We should have-"_

Jack felt terror seize him and he blanked out all else as he saw it. It was sailing straight down, dive-bombing like a depth charge from Hell, over McGee's head. A Lost Soul. He screamed a warning as he raised his pistol, but it was already too late.

The thing disappeared straight into her skull.

" _Back!"_ Blackmore snapped, stumbling away from her.

McGee dropped the tools she'd been holding. They fell slowly and hit the platform soundlessly. She began screaming. The sound was awful and godforsaken and seemed to consume Jack's whole world right then. Her hands shot up to her helmet and she began beating at it, shuddering violently, as though in the grips of a tremendous seizure.

" _HELP ME! HELP ME!"_ she shrieked, falling to her knees.

Jack caught a flash of blood on the inside of her helmet. He was frozen in indecision, having no idea what to do, caught in a paroxysm of terror. McGee suddenly dropped down to her hands and knees and bashed her helmet into the platform. She reared up and did it again. As she came back up for a third time, there was a stark white flash and her head snapped to the side. Blood flew out and flash froze as she fell to the platform again.

" _Get her weapons,"_ Blackmore said quietly after a moment, lowering his pistol.

Jack still felt frozen, but he forced himself to move. Numbly, he took a few steps across the metal deckplates, then fell to his knees. He patted down McGee's body, mutely collecting her weapons and ammunition.

"Done," he reported softly as he got back to his feet.

" _Let's get back inside,"_ Blackmore said, his voice flat.

* * *

They regrouped in the control room once more. Jenkins was standing guard and looking better than he had before. Some of his color was back and he wasn't sweating so much. Baker was leaned forward, staring at the screen of the primary workstation.

"Sergeant Blackmore, I've found a few things out," she said.

"Comms are back up. McGee's dead," Blackmore replied bleakly.

Jenkins stiffened and Baker sat up, turning to stare at them. "What? How?!"

"Lost Soul," Jack said.

"What'd you find out?" Blackmore asked.

"Not as much as I'd like to," Baker said, her features falling at the news of another KIA, and turned back to the screen. "But more than I expected. Their databases are pretty scrambled. I know what the Phobos and Deimos Anomalies are. They're gateways. Teleportation devices. There's a little confusion here about whether or not they discovered the gateways here on the moons, or they built them themselves. I'm not entirely sure. Essentially, when you turn them on and link them up, you can step through and cross the distance instantaneously. Teleportation."

"So what does that have to do with zombies and flying skulls and monsters?" Jack asked.

"I don't know. Maybe...they're from another dimension?" Baker replied, shrugging.

"Well, it's a bit of a moot point now," Blackmore replied. "Fire up the radio. Call us a goddamned evac."

"On it," Baker replied, turning to another screen and working the controls. Jack felt the tension begin to mount as she brought the comms array online. Fear was breaking through the shell of shocked horror at McGee's death. So many things could go wrong...what if they were trapped here on Phobos? What if help never came? A dozen more scenarios flashed through his head as he listened to Baker work in the intense silence.

"Crap..." she whispered.

"What?" Blackmore replied immediately, walking over to her. "Is it still damaged?"

"No," Baker said slowly. "McGee did it. The repairs were good and it all works. Something is actively blocking our outgoing signals."

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure...hold on." She resumed her work. Jack felt his heart thumping hard in his chest. God, please just let this be over... "It's coming from the Phobos Anomaly and it's blanketing half the moon," she explained.

"Great," Blackmore muttered.

Jack felt his hopes fall. He tried to reign in control of himself, but this was all so much. Too much too fast.

"Okay," Blackmore said, a little louder, straightening up. "We go through Central Processing and then hit the Military Base and grab whatever hardware we can get our hands on. From there, we can get to the Phobos Anomaly. We blow it up, then come back here and make the call. Does that make sense to everyone?" he asked, looking around.

Jack found himself nodding. He was beginning to feel better. Not good, but better, now that they had some kind of a plan.

"Good...let's get back to work, Marines."


	17. EPISODE 01: Processed

Jack was beginning to love the trams.

They were like eyes in the storms, places of peace and calm and tranquility. He felt safe there. It was false, he knew, and dangerous to think so, but a part of him couldn't help it. Jack had spent so much of the past ten years training, working out, hardening himself, building his endurance. He had committed to being a Marine, to helping people, to eliminating hostiles. He could go for days without sleep if he had to, could fight in pretty much every environment known to man, (after that last battle on the surface, he basically had now), he could fight with the best of them. And for a decade, he had. But this…

This was just so totally off the radar that his brain was having a hard time adjusting. He hadn't even stopped to think about the ramifications of what these creatures might mean. Were they aliens? Genetically engineered monsters? Or...were they real demons? Were they from Hell? Was Hell real? He'd been thinking about what Baker had said, about them being from another dimension. He'd read enough sci-fi novels to get the basic concept. So what if the UAC had accidentally opened a door to another dimension?

And what if that dimension happened to be Hell?

What did that even mean? Was this the _actual_ Hell they were talking about here, or was it just an awful, chaotic place that merely resembled their concept of Hell? Demons were supposed to be fallen angels, and it wasn't like shotguns could kill angels, fallen or not. The fact that they could kill these awful entities by itself was a tremendous relief. Well, he surmised as they trundled across the surface to Central Processing, if they were demons, then he wasn't all that impressed. That thought almost made him laugh.

Jack shook himself slightly. He needed to get his head back in the game. It seemed that the farther along they went, the closer they got to the Phobos Anomaly, the worse things were. Which made enough sense, given that it was, as far as he knew, the epicenter of this hellish maelstrom that had engulfed the dead moon. And now they had to go to the Anomaly itself. He hoped Blackmore could pull this off, because honestly the plan seemed a little...haphazard. But the situation was haphazard, so this was probably as good as it was going to get.

The tram was coming to a halt now.

Sighing softly, Jack popped his neck and then checked over his weapons. He was low on ammo for his SMG, so he put that in reserve. His shotgun situation was better, but he didn't really want to use up his shells now when he might need them later so, with more than a little reservation, he put that in reserve too and pulled out one of his pistols. He was pretty good on ammo for that, but it just didn't pack the same punch as the other two weapons. But it was the responsible thing to do, and being responsible seemed paramount in this situation.

The tram finished cycling through the airlock.

"On your feet, Marines!" Blackmore called.

Jack stood up, the pre-battle adrenaline pushing back his lethargy and anxiety. It was time to keep going, time to continue the fight. He looked around the interior of the tram. The others weren't looking too good. Jenkins was still sitting quietly, not a good sign for him. His pain must have been back by then. Blackmore was piloting the tram. Baker was standing now, her shotgun in hand, looking grim and fierce. Jennifer caught eyes with him and smiled tiredly. He couldn't help but smile back. However, he quickly lost that smile as the tram settled into Central Processing.

"Well...shit," Baker muttered, looking out the window.

Some kind of calamity had struck the platform beyond. Consequently, the platform was inaccessible...because it had been blown up. There was nothing beyond the open doors of the tram but empty space and some twisted metal around the edges of the room. Jack flicked on the flashlight mounted at the edge of his pistol and pointed it down, playing it across the darkness below. The wrecked remains of the platform, now nothing more than so much twisted, blackened metal, was about twelve feet below.

"Shit," Jack muttered. "We can probably make the jump..." he said, considering it.

"No," Blackmore replied. "Here, in the front. There's an escape hatch with a ladder. I'll head down first, then Ward. Everyone else, stay up here and cover us while we clear the way."

There were a string of affirmative replies as Jack moved into the front of the tram. Blackmore was crouched, getting a hatch open. Within a minute, he had it open and the ladder extended. He disappeared down into the hole. Jack hovered above, waiting, prepared to spring into action. But nothing happened. He reached the bottom and called up. Jack holstered his pistol and mounted the ladder, hurrying down it.

Being on ladders creeped him out now.

He felt vulnerable.

Jack managed to hit the bottom and as soon as he stepped off, he grabbed his shotgun. So much for conserving ammo for later. He switched on the flashlight and faced the opposite direction Blackmore was facing. The Sergeant was moving slowly forward, towards where the entrance to the facility would be, so Jack covered the back way. He hadn't even known these platforms had open areas beneath them, but he supposed it made enough sense. His light revealed several more of those toxic gray barrels, a stack of generic silver crates, a few bodies…

"Hostiles!" Jack roared as he squeezed the trigger.

Barely a quarter second later, a mule kicked him in the chest. Or at least that's what it felt like. He was picked up and thrown backwards, slamming onto his back among the debris. Vision swimming, ears ringing, Jack staggered to his feet. There was a confusing green glow now and someone was shouting at him and what had happened!? He raised his shotgun, only to discover that it had been thrown from his grasp, and instead his hand fell automatically to the butt of his pistol. He yanked it out and raised it.

There were no more hostiles now.

At least not in front of him.

"Some goddamned warning would be nice next time, Ward!" Blackmore was shouting. Jack finally realized what had happened: he'd been aiming for an Imp that had appeared from the darkness and instead had hit one of those damned barrels. While he was still processing this, a fireball flew over his right shoulder from behind. Gunfire sounded from overhead and Jack spun around, raising his pistol again. He seized briefly as he saw the opposition: in the glaring white, strobing light of the muzzle flares, a dozen Imps, hidden among the shadows, were revealed. He snapped back to reality and began opening fire while backing up.

There seemed to be nowhere to hide, nowhere to duck.

The only option was to fight like hell. Jack emptied his magazine as he strafed to the right, away from Blackmore, as not to make one target or get in his way. He got a shot through the eye of one of the creatures, dropping it like a rock, and put holes in the chest of another, then shot the neck of a third. Overhead, the others rained down death from above. Fireballs scorched past as Jack ejected the spent magazine and slammed a fresh one in. He grunted as one of them smacked him in the chestplate. An awful heat hit his skin as the fire washed over the metal and he did his best to ignore it as he regained his footing.

He ducked down as he opened fire, concentrating on two that were in front of him. One of the beasts roared and reared back to throw another fireball. Its big open mouth presented the perfect target and he put two shots into it. The back of its head opened up like a ripe watermelon hitting concrete from three stories up and blood, brains and bone fragments splattered the wall behind it. Jack switched aim and popped off another two shots, grazing its cheek with one and then putting a shot right through its forehead.

He switched targets, but there were no more targets. They'd put down the rest of the Imps. Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Let's finish the sweep and clear," Blackmore said, reloading his SMG.

Jack nodded shakily and resumed the search. They spent another two minutes poking through the area, checking out a small storage room, a workroom and a simple bathroom before declaring it safe. The others joined them, moving down the ladder, then picked their way across the debris-strewn floor to the workroom, where there was an emergency access ladder. Jack led the way this time, clambering up the ladder and opening the hatch at the top. He cautiously poked his head up and out, finding himself in another small storage area.

"Clear," he said, hauling himself out and bringing his shotgun, which he'd finally managed to track down, into play.

There was nowhere to hide in the room, at least. He waited until the others had come up, then moved over to the door. Blackmore joined him and he opened it up. They cleared the hallway beyond, then moved quickly down it, and came to the ingress to the processing plant. It was definitely a lot bleaker than the other lobbies they'd been to. There was little more than metal and the UAC logo stamped everywhere and a simple desk in the middle of the room. The way was clear for the moment and they went to work.

Jack and Jennifer picked through the remains of the security kiosks while Blackmore and Jenkins secured the area. Baker, being the most technically minded survivor of the group apparently, settled in at the central desk to see what information she could pull from the local network. When they finished up their respective jobs, she didn't have any good news for them.

"Central Processing is locked down," she said.

"What a surprise," Blackmore muttered. "I don't suppose there's any way to circumvent it?"

"Not unless you want to take a space walk," Baker replied. "We're going to need three different keycards. Two of them are accessible right now. Unfortunately, the third won't be accessible until we find the other two. _Then,_ once we get the third card, we can access the processing center itself. Then we can pass through it and get to the tram and take it to the base," she explained.

"Fine," Blackmore said. He studied the screen and called the others over. "All right, looks like they're in two different wings. These are accurate?" he asked.

Baker nodded. "Yeah, we can pinpoint their exact location. Lower security in this building," she replied.

"Okay. So, Ward, Taylor, Baker, you'll head into this maintenance area and get the blue keycard. I'll take Jenkins into the storage area and we'll get the red keycard. We meet back here as soon as possible," Blackmore said.

They split up. Jack didn't like the look of the maintenance section. From the map, it appeared like a confused network of corridors and rooms. Not exactly the most confidence inspiring environment. Didn't matter, though. He had to go there. At least he had backup. Jack took the lead, finding himself in a long, broad corridor of decent lighting and gleaming silver metal. They stopped to check whatever doors came to them, finding only storage areas full of those awful barrels and, thankfully, nothing to shoot at.

When they came to the entrance to the maintenance sector, Jack opened the door and then stopped dead in his tracks.

"You've got to be kidding me," he muttered.

There was a small room beyond the door with three tunnels snaking away from it and the whole area was bathed in a slowly dying and resurrecting strobing light. Even worse, he heard a zombie groan, and something else let out a low growl.

"Well this sucks," Jennifer said.

"Let's get this over with," Baker replied.

Jack sighed and stepped through the threshold and into the simple room beyond. He looked down each one of the three tunnels. None of them looked any more inviting than the other. Remembering that the keycard was supposed to be towards the left, that's the way he went. The others followed him, reassuring at his six.

Almost immediately the strobe effect began to get to him. It made it difficult to focus. He paused as he reached another intersection with three more tunnels branching away. The room was small but packed with gear. There were a pair of heavily used workbenches and a row of lockers. It was hard to believe anyone had to work here. Jack turned right, pressing deeper into the network. He gripped his shotgun more tightly as he thought he saw something flash by further down the corridor. He hesitated, wondering if he'd actually seen something or not. Damn these lights! Cautiously, he resumed his forward progress.

It was slow going, as he had to stop every ten feet or so, wherever a cross corridor cut through the primary one. When he hit the third cross hallway, which marked roughly the halfway point in their miserable journey, he turned to the left, saw nothing, turned to the right and found himself staring at an Imp that was winding up to throw a fireball. He didn't give it a chance, raising his shotgun and pounding out a shell.

It was a good shot, punching a fist-sized hole in its chest and spraying the area around it with deep red gore. Unfortunately, it alerted everything else in the pulsing maze to their location, and apparently there were a lot of hostiles around. A chorus of roars, groans and shrieks sounded from all around them. Jack snapped a curse and prepared for the worst, hurrying down the corridor. If they could just get to the workroom the damned keycard was in, they could snatch it and get out. A zombie stepped out in front of him, a pistol in its hand, though there was no black armor on it. Jack aimed and fired, blowing its head clean off.

Behind him, he heard the boom of another shotgun firing.

"On our six!" Baker called.

"Keep pushing!" Jennifer yelled, punctuating her sentence with a blast from her own shotgun.

Jack cocked the gun, aimed and fired again, blowing the left arm off an Imp that appeared in the corridor ahead of him, then shifted aim and blasted once more, ripping away a good chunk of its skull in a spray of brains and blood. They kept going, shooting their way through the complex of tight corridors, the lights pulsing madly, made all the worse by the muzzle flare. He emptied his shotgun putting down another pair of zombies, three Imps and a Demon. He made sure to kill that one _fast_. That was not something to fight in this environment.

His visor became streaked with blood.

"We're here!" he called as they hit the end of the hall. He punched the open button and stepped inside, clearing the workroom quickly, finding nothing alive inside, then spun around. "In!" he shouted as he quickly fed more shells into his shotgun. Baker was walking backwards at this point, blasting away at whatever remained. Jennifer hurried in and got out of the way. Once Baker was in, Jack finished loading his shotgun, then switched out to his SMG, leveled it at the remaining creatures coming at them and unloaded.

When his gun began clicking, there wasn't anything left standing in the corridor. He looked down its length, seeing a good twenty or so corpses strewn across it. Well...so far, so good. None of them were dead, at least.

"Baker," he said as he reloaded his SMG with its last mag, "guard the door. We'll look for the keycard."

"On it," she replied, standing at the room's point of ingress.

The pair of them moved slowly over the room. It was a mess, even by normal workroom standards. Several crates had been toppled and burst open, spare parts and tools spilled everywhere. There were a few ravaged corpses for company as well. After several minutes, Jack finally found the card in question hidden away in the pocket of a suit wrapped around a severed leg.

"Got it," he said, holding it up to the light and double-checking it. Yep, it looked good. He slipped it into a secure pocket. "Let's-"

"Contacts!" Baker shouted. She stepped out of the room and there was a sharp report from her shotgun. Jack moved to join her and help fight whatever it was, but let out a startled cry as the door suddenly slammed shut.

"Shit!" he snapped, rushing forward and hitting the open button. Nothing happened.

"There's too many of them!" he heard Baker scream over the radio. "Get the door open!"

"It's locked!" Jack yelled. Shaking with adrenaline, he suddenly dropped to one knee, pulled out his knife and jammed it in between the panel and the wall. He forced it open and popped the panel off. Outside, he heard more gunshots and roaring. He had enough tech knowledge to be able to override the door's controls. He ripped some wires out and began bringing them together. Baker screamed. Sweating and trembling furiously from fear and adrenaline and desperate need, Jack finally managed to get the door open.

" _Baker!_ " Jennifer screamed.

Jack felt his veins turn to ice as he shot to his feet, raising his shotgun. They were too late. Baker was still screaming as an Imp ripped her arm from her body, armor and all. At the same time, a zombie was grabbing her neck, strangling her. Another Imp punched its fist into her stomach and yanked out a fistful of her foamy guts.

Jack screamed as he blasted away. The first shot took Baker's head off, because she was dead and there was nothing they could do to save her. The only thing he could save her from was the pain. He turned and blasted away one of the Imp's, blowing its head off, then shot the second Imp in the neck. Jennifer was blowing away the zombies. Another one wandered into view and Jack decapitated that fucker next.

His shotgun was dry.

He dropped it, pulled out his pistol and emptied the magazine putting down the stragglers. He stood there for a long moment in stricken silence with Jennifer, neither of them moving. Finally, Jack broke the stillness by reloading his pistol and holstering it again. "Come on," he said quietly, stepping out into the corridor. "Let's get her gear."

* * *

It was slim pickings between what Baker had left on her and the zombies they'd killed. His shotgun was still dry and he'd only managed to pick up a few more magazines for his pistol, which he was currently using. He didn't like how sparse ammo was or how fast it all seemed to go, but there were just so many hostiles around. It was what many referred to as a target rich environment. Well, at least the pistol was sturdy.

It didn't take them too long to reunite with Blackmore and Jenkins in the main room. The Sergeant accepted the keycard from Jack and solemnly swiped them both. The quartet of them lined up, ready for whatever lay beyond the large, silver door. It slid open, revealing the next section of Central Processing.

It wasn't all that impressive.

Mostly it was just an intermediary area where they seemed to have routed a lot of pipes and power junctions through, mixed in with some generic storage bays and maintenance areas. They still had to get through the main plant. The four of them spent ten minutes hunting through the maintenance areas and pipe rooms, putting down a handful of zombies and Imps, before they managed to find the third and final keycard.

Once they had it, they gathered at the primary entrance to the plant.

Jack readied himself, trying his best to banish the encroaching hopelessness and despair that seemed to bubble up to the surface whenever another one of his fellow Marines died. All he could do was push back against the darkness. Had to stay sharp, had to keep his head in the game. Or he was going to end up like Baker and Peterson and McGee. He wondered, suddenly, where Thompson had ended up, if he was even still alive. Then the door was opening. He was at its right side, crouched down, scoping the situation out.

Blackmore was on the left side, doing the same, and the other two were waiting in reserve. A vast, expansive area awaited them beyond the threshold. It was definitely the main processing plant. Huge silver tanks lined either side and catwalks provided a kind of second story overhead, crisscrossing between the processing stations and monitoring terminals. The main floor was basically clear of obstructions.

Jack couldn't help but think of a shooting gallery.

There was a lot of darkness, a lot of bad space in the immense room beyond. There were no hostiles visible in that moment, but the whole place stank of ambush. They continued lingering for a few moments longer.

"Come on," Blackmore said finally. "Quick and quiet. Tram station is just on the other side of the processing complex."

He took point. Jack was right behind him. Jenkins and Jennifer brought up the rear. They plunged into the gloom, preparing themselves for the worst. Jack felt his whole body tensing in anticipation as they cut right down the middle, not wanting to risk getting too close to either side. Anything could lurk among the dark machinery there. Their footsteps echoed in the huge room and Jack strained his ears against the sounds to detect any hints of enemies, constant scanning the peripheral of the area. He began to see things.

Shifting shapes and uncertain shadows that might just have been their lights playing across the area or might have been something alive and evil. They hit the halfway mark. That's when the room seemed to shriek to awful life around them. Jack saw about a dozen fireballs spring into existence and began sailing towards them...and that was just from the right side. At the same time, muzzle flare began popping around them, from the ground floor and the catwalks above.

"Run!" Blackmore roared.

They bolted, breaking into a ragged formation and sprinting for the far exit. It was a good thirty meters away but it might as well have been thirty miles. Jack didn't even bother shooting, instead focusing on getting the hell out of there. He felt a bullet hit his armor and knew from the stinging pain that he'd have a bitch of a bruise there soon. A fireball scorched past his face. Another just barely missed his hand. The room was alive with hostiles. He heard the others grunting as they endured pain of their own.

And then, suddenly, after pounding across the deckplates for what felt like ages and eras, dodging here and there, nearly tripping over each other, skirting around big pieces of machinery, they were there, at the exit.

"Get it open!" Blackmore roared, spinning around.

Jenkins got to it and Jack and Jennifer dug in their heels and spun around, pistols out, ready to rock and roll. Some of the Imps had leaped down from the catwalks and emerged from the shadows and were coming for them, hissing and shrieking. Jack braced the pistol with both hands, aimed down the iron sights and blasted the first thing that he saw. He punched holes in the hideous red face of an Imp, dropping it, then turned and fired again, shooting a second demonic beast three times in the chest and spraying its fellows with blood.

Beside him, Jennifer and Blackmore were plugging away, the good Sergeant with his SMG. Jack heard a groan from his right and spun. Two zombies were coming out of the shadows there, in between two big pieces of machinery. He capped both of them, then turned back to the front and emptied his magazine into another Imp.

"Any day now, Jenkins!" Blackmore snapped.

"Almost there!" Jenkins called back.

Jack sighed, ejected the spent magazine and slapped a fresh one in. There were still a good two dozen Imps and zombies visible and more were emerging all the time. Jack had taken two more shots in his armor by now and a fireball had come perilously close to ending his life. He emptied the second magazine putting down another pair of zombies and a trio of fire-spewing Imps. Right as he finished reloading again, Jenkins gave the call.

"It's open!"

"Go! I'll cover our retreat!" Blackmore shouted.

Jack didn't need to be told twice. There were more of them coming and he thought he heard the pounding footfalls of Demons now. He turned and ran through the door at about the same time Jennifer did. Once they were through and they took the bare minimum few seconds to ensure the room was clear, they spun back around and opened fire, providing cover for Blackmore. The second the Sergeant was through the door, Jack punched the close button, then the lock button. As soon as the little pad turned red, silence fell.

Jack almost felt like collapsing now that it was over. Except that it wasn't over, not really. This was just a temporary reprieve.

"Come on," Blackmore said after a few breaths. "Tram's just ahead."

Jack made himself keep going.


	18. EPISODE 01: Military Precision

"Hey, how are you holding up?" Jack asked as he sat down next to Jenkins. They'd been in the tram for a few moments now, Blackmore silently assuming the role of conductor once more and driving them to the Military Base now. It was, hopefully, the last stop before they hit the Phobos Anomaly, wiped it out and got the hell off this moon.

"Stomach hurts like shit and I'm not sure but I might've pissed myself once or twice so far. Other than that, I'm fine," Jenkins replied.

Jack laughed. He remembered first meeting the kid. His assessment seemed to have not been entirely correct. Jenkins had fought well and hard, and hadn't folded under the pressure. Well, not since the beginning at least. And he was still going, even through all this shit and with a gutshot. "What about you?" Jenkins asked.

"I'm good...you know, all things considered," Jack replied. "This wasn't exactly what I was expecting when I got up here."

"Yeah, definitely," Jenkins muttered. "I wonder how much they knew."

"Who?"

"The people who sent us here. I mean, this is like an exile assignment. Did they all send us here just because they didn't want to deal with us anymore...or because they knew something like this was going to happen?"

Jack considered it. He did wonder that. "I can't imagine the UAC let the people back on Earth in on much. Probably the guys who sent us here knew that _something_ was up, something dangerous, and they were hoping that maybe we'd get offed up here one way or the other. I can't imagine anyone was expecting _this,_ " he replied.

"I guess so."

"Guys, I think we have a problem," Jennifer said.

Jack turned to face her.

"Yeah...been getting a little worried about that myself," Blackmore replied from the front of the tram.

He immediately saw the problem. Outside the glass tunnel, in a lot of directions, he could see the awful burning sigils of the Lost Souls and the looming dark shapes of the gun-toting zombies in their suits, which were apparently atmospherically sealed. Jack felt his heart begin to pound harder in his chest, straining against his ribcage. There were a lot of them out there. And...they seemed to be taking interest in the tram.

"Oh shit..." he whispered.

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a rocket suddenly streaked from its dark metal nest somewhere off from the right and slammed into the glass tunnel about twenty feet ahead of them. The glass cracked, then shattered and then huge pieces of the framework fell across the tracks. Blackmore snapped out a curse as he hit the emergency brakes. Jack continued watching in horror as he saw the floor of the tunnel open up and collapse below. A dark hole cut off access to the rest of the tunnel. He grunted as he was thrown from his seat.

All of this happened in the span of just a few seconds.

"Suit up! Get ready to fight!" Blackmore called as he left the front compartment. "We're heading back to the surface. We're going to get alongside the exterior tunnel wall and fight our way to the auxiliary airlock. Ready?!"

"Ready!" the three of them shouted back as they regained their feet and readied their weapons.

"Let's do it!"

Blackmore opened the door and leaped out into the atmospherically compromised tunnel. The oxygen inside of the tram was sucked out, making it that much easier to leave the once safe vehicle. Jack was out next, hitting the metal deckplates beyond, pistol in hand. His shotgun was still dry and he didn't want to use up his SMG. Chances were they weren't going to be doing much fighting out here anyway, just running.

The four of them moved quickly up to the collapsed portion of the tunnel. He wished they could make the jump, and maybe if the gravity wasn't working, but it was and it was also too dark to see down into the hole. Anything could be down there. Anything at all. So instead they slipped carefully out of the tunnel as quickly as they could, as the Lost Souls were closing in and the armored zombies were peppering their position with gunfire. Once the four of them hit the surface, Jack's stomach started to roll.

Not much gravity out here.

They began hurrying along the gray rocky ground as quickly as they could. Jack saw a Lost Soul closing in on him, flaming eyes flickering madly as it made a beeline and he aimed and popped off three shots, breaking the thing into so much free-flying, smoking bony bits. No way he was letting one of those fucking things get to him. There were stark flashes as the others fired occasionally, taking a potshot at a zombie or putting down a Lost Soul that was getting too close. There had to be a couple of dozen of the flying terrors out there.

And he had no idea how many zombies were roving around beyond the reach of the light. At least twenty, probably more. Jack's heart pumped madly and he gasped for breath as he hurried along the exterior of the tunnel. The Military Base was getting closer now, looming over them: a great gunmetal gray rectangle punctuated with windows and airlocks. They hit the halfway mark and kept booking it, going as fast as they could.

Jack emptied his pistol and reloaded. Not a great deal of ammo left. He grunted and grit his teeth as he felt a shot take him in the thigh. The armor held but it still hurt like hell. He kept going, kept pushing, kept running. Suddenly, he was there. Blackmore had the airlock open and was turning around to provide cover. Jack, Jennifer and Jenkins ran in. They provided cover for Blackmore as he slipped inside and the door snapped shut.

"Shit," Jack whispered as the airlock began its cycle. "That was close."

" _Stay sharp,"_ Blackmore replied. _"We've got no idea what's behind these doors but I'm willing to bet it's awful."_

" _It would be par for the course at this point,"_ Jennifer muttered grimly.

Jack took a second to get his breath back, then refocused himself. The airlock finished its cycle. Jack raised his pistol as the doors slid open. He let out a startled shout and snapped off a shot as they parted to reveal the flat black glass of an armored zombie's faceplate. The bullet shattered the glass and punched through the skull beyond. The zombie dropped, but in the bay beyond he could see more. Blackmore appeared at his side, shotgun in hand, and blew one's head off. Jack put down another two with quick headshots.

"More incoming!" Blackmore called as the sound of heavy boots could be heard.

The two of them rushed into the bay beyond, securing it as quickly as they could. It was a combination maintenance area locker room with two entrances. One of them open, one closed. "Secure it!" Blackmore snapped.

Jack took his meaning immediately and rushed across the room, which thankfully wasn't all that big. He hit the lock button, then spun around right as he heard the boom of Blackmore's shotgun and the popping of a pistol. A pair of zombies were coming in through the room. They went down under the gunfire. Jack crouched behind a workbench that had been pushed away from the wall, took aim and squeezed the trigger as another figure appeared. As he prepared for the next zombie to appear, he heard a sound behind him.

The door he'd just locked was opening.

He shouted and spun around right as the door opened up to admit another zombie. He emptied the pistol into it, dropped it and ripped his second pistol out of its holster. He continued firing, screaming as he did, spent brass flying as the muzzle flare flashed wildly. He put down another three zombies before that gun was empty as well. He dropped the pistol and brought his SMG up, but nothing else came to the door.

"Clear!" Blackmore called. Jack shakily recovered his pistols. "I thought you secured that door, Ward," Blackmore said.

"I did, Sergeant," he replied as he reloaded. "It was locked."

"Shit, that means they can unlock doors," Blackmore muttered. "Come on, let's go. I want to get some heavier firepower. Pat these assholes down first."

Jack quickly went to work on that particular order, as he was _really_ running low on ammo. Just one magazine left for his SMG and no spare magazines left for his pistol after reloading both of them. After searching the pockets and emptying the guns of the dozen or so zombies they'd killed, he managed to snag another pair of mags for his pistol and two more for his SMG. Still nothing for the shotgun. Which sucked, he liked that shotgun.

Once the job was done, they stepped out into the corridor beyond...and promptly ran into trouble. Both exits from the corridor were locked, and the only other doors led to a bathroom, a storage room and a workroom, and they were all dead ends. Jack activated the first general access terminal they could find and looked the information over.

"Let me guess, this building is in lockdown?" Blackmore asked.

"Yep," Jack replied.

"Goddamnit! All right, screw this. Lemme see that terminal," he said, stepping up to it. Jack stepped aside and waited. A few minutes went by. "Okay, this is what we're going to do," Blackmore began. "There's a network of sewers and maintenance tunnels below us and there's access back in that first room. We go down there, we gut the damned lockout controls and then get to the armory," he explained.

And so they did.

Jack found himself leading the expedition into the underground as they backtracked and hunted down the hatch. He opened it up and looked down the narrow shaft. It extended about fifteen feet and wasn't very well lit. All he could see was a square of metal at the bottom. Sighing quietly, he let his weapons hang and mounted the ladder. Making his way down as quickly as he could, he hit the bottom, jumped off and brought his SMG into play. He didn't like what he saw, but it at least wasn't a living enemy coming for him.

It was a blood-stricken work area that was totally trashed. Machinery bled sparks, tools and parts and debris were strewn across the deckplates. What really disturbed him were the parts of bodies. The limbs, the heads, the half-eaten torsos and severed hands. If he didn't know any better, he'd say it was a feeding pit.

Somewhere nearby, something snorted and let out a deep growl.

"I think we've got Demons nearby," Jack reported as he stepped out of the way.

"Of course we do," Blackmore muttered as he got off the ladder. "Wouldn't want it to be too easy, now would we?"

Jennifer and Jenkins joined them and they gathered at the exit. This time Blackmore took point, as he knew the way there. He opened the door and stepped out. Once he gave the all clear, Jack followed and found himself in a long, tight corridor. Oh great, more of these. At least the lights weren't flashing or strobing or whatever. Unfortunately, he could smell the thick reek of guts and raw meat. It smelled like a fresh slaughterhouse.

Something else growled. It was closer now.

"Get ready," Blackmore whispered.

Jack had his SMG in hand now, eyes wide, adrenaline surging through him. The four of them began making their way down the corridor. They heard stomping footfalls but saw nothing in the shadowed and sometimes flickering alcoves that branched away from the main hall. The noises were getting louder. They reached the end of the corridor, which terminated in a T junction. Blackmore broke left, taking them into an antechamber with four corridors leading away from it. The good Sergeant headed left again and began walking.

That's when it all went to hell.

A roar sounded and a Demon appeared at the head of the corridor and began stomping towards them, its immense maw open and ready to consume.

"Fall back!" Blackmore roared as he aimed and fired, putting a well-placed shotgun shell directly into the thing's big fat mouth and blowing open the back of its huge misshapen head. Another one appeared to replace the fallen creature.

"On our six!" Jennifer yelled, punctuating the warning with a shotgun blast of her own.

Jack cursed and raised his SMG. Blackmore dropped to one knee and stepped to the right, giving Jack a good avenue of fire over his head.

"Firing!" he shouted, aiming at the Demon that was coming towards them. He squeezed the trigger and stitched a bloody line across its face, bursting one of its great golden eyes and piercing its brain, killing it instantly. The next one didn't go down so easily. Jack emptied the SMG into it, finding it harder to sink a killing shot as these things were built tough. He tossed the spent mag and slapped a new one in. Blackmore finished it off, but there were already two more vying for entryway into the hallway.

"We're in trouble!" Jenkins shouted.

"Ward, get that door open!" Blackmore snapped.

"On it!" Jack replied, letting his SMG hang by its sling and stepping up to the only door in the hallway. Luckily it wasn't locked. He opened it and stepped inside, clearing it with a sweep of his SMG. Finding it empty, he called to the others…

This his eyes fell on something new.

"Fall back!"

He stepped forward, staring at it. It rested on a bloodied workbench beneath a bright work-light hanging overhead shining down on it. It almost looked like an alter, like it had been placed there intentionally.

It was a chainsaw, glistening steel teeth and all.

Jack grabbed it and raised it. He spun around and saw that the others were in the room now. "Step aside!" he shouted, then grabbed the ripcord and yanked it for all he was worth. The chainsaw roared to life, drowning out the inhuman sounds of the Demons. It was spectacular and glorious. Jack drove the spinning teeth of the chainsaw into the face of the first Demon as it stomped in through the door. The thing let out a roar of awful pain and fury as thick sprays of blood coated his suit and faceplate and the metal walls around them.

When the beast stopped moving, he yanked the blade out and it fell. Then he drove it into the big gaping mouth of the next one. Jack wasn't sure how long he spent chopping up the fresh meat and coating the walls with blood, and he was only vaguely aware of the fact that he was screaming, but it felt _good_. It was like he was fighting back against his terror, his pain, his anger, his hopelessness. He was killing it all, carving up these shrieking, reeking Demons as they came to him. He was jarred out of the killing trace when the chainsaw stopped spinning. Coming back to himself, Jack smelled blood and smoke.

He was out in the hallway and his arms were tired and he could hardly see because there was so much blood on his visor.

"You got them, Ward."

He jerked in surprise and spun around, wiping at his visor. He was gasping for breath. "You okay, Ward? You nearly blew my eardrums out," Blackmore said. He was standing amidst a field of chopped up Demon corpses that ran the entire length of the corridor, which was now utterly coated in fresh blood. Jack nodded, shaking now. The chainsaw had been torn from his hands, he realized, as it had become stuck in the last Demon's face.

"Yeah...uh...I'm okay," he replied.

"Here," Blackmore said, handing him his SMG. "Good job."

"Thanks," he replied, accepting it.

"Come on, we aren't far."

Blackmore moved ahead of him as Jennifer and Jenkins came out into the corridor.

"Man, that was awesome! You went like total berserker fury!"

"Yeah...it was pretty crazy," Jack replied. He was still coming down from the adrenaline spike and he had to admit, the fact that he had kind of blanked out there for a little bit freaked him out. He hadn't lost control like that before. Jennifer cleared her throat and Jenkins glanced at her. She gave him a meaningful look. He became uncomfortable, turned around and began following after Blackmore. Jack and Jennifer followed after them.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "I kind of blacked out there. I was seeing red." He wiped again at his faceplate, clearing it. "I kind of just snapped."

"It was really intense. You went primal," she said.

"This place is starting to get to me. Like...really get to me," Jack murmured.

Jennifer didn't seem to know what to say, and he didn't blame her. There was nothing to say. They had apparently killed all the awful inhabitants of the underground labyrinth, as they encountered nothing else following Blackmore to wherever it was he was going. He led them to what appeared to be some kind of central power nexus that was covered in all manner of technology and machinery. "Gonna override the damned lockout. My security codes have to count for something," he said as he settled in to work. The three of them stood guard while he worked.

After several minutes, he sighed and stood. "Well...I reached a compromise with the computer. The lockout is raised...but now all the doors are open upstairs and there's not a whole lot we can do about it," he explained.

"Great," Jack muttered.

"Yeah. Let's get back up there."

* * *

When they got topside, they heard gunfire.

A lot of it. And shouting.

Jack felt his worry and exhaustion and weariness being shoved aside by the pure, simple joy of finding another survivor. Someone must surely be alive. Only a human could shout that many curse words while blasting away at a horde of monsters. The four of them hurried through the base, following the sounds of conflict. They pounded through a few corridors, cut through a mess hall and an utterly decimated barracks and finally located the source of the battle in a bloodied infirmary. Jack saw a trio of black-armored zombies making for the entrance and gunned them down with the others. As he did so, he realized he recognized that voice.

"Come on, you zombie fucks, I've got enough for all of you!"

"Thompson! Friendlies coming in!" Jack called.

"Oh, shit, who the hell is that?!"

"Jack! We're coming in!"

"Hurry up!"

They finished clearing out the zombies and then got into the infirmary. Thompson stood in the middle of a sea of dead bodies, a huge gun in his hands. His envirosuit was streaked with blood and gore and burn marks.

"Oh my God, I can't tell you how good it is to see you guys," he said, lowering the gun.

"I can honestly say the same thing," Jack replied.

Thompson grinned broadly at them, but then his features fell. "Where's everyone else?" he asked slowly.

"You're looking at the team," Blackmore replied grimly. "Where did you go?"

"When the shit went down, I ended up finding my way down into the sewers. They run all over Phobos Base. I got _really_ damned lost and when I finally figured out where I was, I thought it might be a good idea to hit up the Military Base. I figured if anyone were to survive this crap, it'd be the Marines," he explained.

"A good idea," Blackmore said. "I assume you grabbed that from the armory?"

"Yep," he said, hefting the huge, six-barreled silver gun. "She's a beauty. There was another one in there and more ammo than I could carry...so what's the situation? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're here, but why didn't you bug out?"

"Pilot's dead, ship's busted," Jack replied.

"Of course. So what's the plan?"

"Show us to the armory and I'll fill you in," Blackmore said.

As they walked out of the room, Jack frowned at the several black-armored zombies. "I hate these guys," he muttered.

"The Z-Secs? Yeah, they're nasty," Thompson replied.

"What'd you call them?" Jennifer asked.

"Z-Sec. They're supposed to be top dog security up here. I found a few documents talking about them," Thompson explained.

"I guess that explains why they're so dangerous..." Jack murmured.

It looked like Thompson had really cleared the place out. They passed several dead zombies, Z-Secs, Imps and Demons. And a lot of spent brass. When he showed them to the armory, Jack was sad to see that it was pretty depleted. Although there was another chaingun. "Mine," he said, crossing the room and claiming the big silver gun. He recognized the make and model. It was a DX-56 'Widowmaker' chaingun. It was big, nasty and powerful as hell. It took boxes of ammo. It was loaded and there was one spare box.

Jack put the spare into his backpack.

"Sure you can handle that?" Blackmore asked.

"You're damn right, Sergeant," he replied. It was heavy, but he could handle it. And he wanted to. He was eager to test it out on some monsters. Blackmore just chuckled, then he looked down at the floor, somewhere behind Jack, and his features fell.

"Ah hell," he muttered.

"What?" Jack asked, turning around. He spied a corpse on the floor, its stomach cut open and one arm ripped off.

"Master Sergeant Willits," Blackmore said, walking past him and crouching by the body for a moment. "I thought if anyone could survive this hell, he would...we served together, back on Earth. In Peru, then again in Australia. He was a legit hardass. Damn," he muttered again, straightening up. After seeming to collect his thoughts, he turned to address them. "All right people, finish gathering up all you can. It's too dangerous to head out onto the surface, so we're going to have to take the underground tunnels to the Phobos Anomaly."


	19. EPISODE 01: Beneath

Thompson showed them the entrance to the spaces beneath the surface of Phobos. Jack had an immediate dislike of it, but, then again, he had an immediate dislike of most of the things he'd encountered on Phobos Base so far. It was a service lift that looked as if someone had stepped inside and promptly exploded. Blackmore sent Jack and Thompson down first, to make sure the area was secure and not to risk them all.

The pair of them stepped onto the lift and Thompson hit the button. The doors closed and it began its slow descent.

"Man, I gotta say, you're like a legit badass," Jack said.

Thompson laughed. "Why do you say that?"

"You managed to survive all this crazy ass shit by yourself. And in the sewers, too. I've managed to have someone with me basically the whole time," he replied.

"I guess so. I wasn't really thinking about much, honestly. I was just...you know, going. Doing. Killing."

"What do you think about these things?"

Thompson shrugged. "Man, I've got no idea. I mean, zombies I could kind of get past. But flying skulls? Big red bastards that throw fire? Those shaved gorillas? It's nuts. I think they were doing some kind of genetic experiments or something."

"I think they come from another dimension. That's what the Phobos Anomaly is. It's a gateway that leads to another dimension, I think."

"Holy shit, like that old movie Event Horizon?"

"I'm not sure I've seen that movie."

"It's really old, like, from before the year two thousand. I like the horror classics." He stopped speaking as the elevator settled into its metal nest. "Go time," he muttered.

Both men raised their chainguns, and good thing, too, because the doors opened to reveal a half-dozen Demons pounding around in the receiving bay beyond. Jack squeezed the trigger of the chaingun and knew what it was to feel true power in his hands. Both huge silver guns spoke and began churning out rounds. The Demons roared as they were converted into piles of smoking, chewed-up meat. Bloody gore and viscera was sprayed and splattered across the bay beyond, painting the walls, floor and ceiling in red.

When the guns fell silent, gunsmoke drifting from the twelve barrels, all was still and silent. Jack checked the ammo counter. He'd used up three quarters of the box. Damn. But _wow_ had that been badass as hell.

"That's what I'm talking about!" Thompson said, grinning broadly. He stepped out into the bay beyond and Jack joined him.

He activated his radio. "Room's clear. We're sending the lift back up. Over."

" _Affirmative. Out,"_ Blackmore replied.

He hit the up button and stepped out, letting the doors close. While he waited for the others to come down, he studied the receiving bay they'd come to. It was a large, roughly triangular room, the wall behind him being the bottom and the way ahead narrowing towards one of three exits in the room. The doors were at least closed and looked relatively secure. Though that could change at any moment. Judging by the amount of corpses in the area, it seemed like this was another feeding area for the Demons.

He hated those things.

The elevator returned and deposited the others. They stepped out and surveyed the scene. "Nice," Blackmore said. "We need a map."

"I've got one," Thompson replied. "Sorry. Forgot to mention it. This place has got me a little fried," he added, passing Blackmore a bloodstained PDA.

The Sergeant accepted it wordlessly and studied it. Slowly, he nodded and passed it to Jennifer. "Pass it around, study it. All we've got to do is make our way through the initial complex, then, once we hit the main tunnel that connects the Military Base to the Computer Station, we'll be fine. Unfortunately, there's no direct underground route to the Phobos Anomaly. If we want to get there, it has to be across the surface," he explained.

They each passed the PDA around, studying the map, then Blackmore accepted it at the end and secured it. Jack went on point again, an assignment he just loved, and moved up to the front of the room. He opened the big silver door there and found himself staring down another long, dark hallway, lit occasionally by flickering lights. The walls were lined with all manner of pipes and some of them leaked steam.

"Fantastic," Jack muttered. He took a moment to switch out his weapons, letting his chaingun hang across his back and grabbing his SMG. He flicked on the muzzle-mounted flashlight and aimed it down the corridor. He waited a few seconds and when he didn't see or hear anything immediately threatening, he took off, leading the team in a single file down the metal tunnel. He listened intently, trying to pick out signs of life, but a variety of sounds soon assaulted him, most of them mechanical. They were in the guts of the base now.

Power generated, water ran, atmosphere filtered, machinery clanked. Not exactly the most ideal environment. Especially considering that everywhere seemed to be flooded with a misty kind of steam. They reached the end of the passageway without incident and came into a larger room. It was obviously some kind of central control area. There were more pipes along the walls and the ceiling, along with several larger pieces of machinery and workstations scattered across the main floor. Most of it was dead or sparking.

The remains of the maintenance personnel were here, there and everywhere.

The team slowly made their way through the area, the tension beginning to mount. Jack moved between a series of workstations, his boots squelching loudly on the blood, SMG in hand, light playing across the darker corners of the room. The place reeked, but he was already beginning to get used to that awful smell of spilled guts, blood and rotting meat. He managed to cross the room first, but as he came closer to the door they were supposed to go through, he noticed that something was wrong with it. Namely, it was dented outwards severely.

In fact, it was so dented that he could see through parts of it. He approached the door slowly and peered through one of the larger holes, confirming his suspicion.

"We've got a problem, Sergeant. The tunnel's collapsed," he reported.

Blackmore joined him and looked in through the hole, then sighed heavily. "Gimme a minute," he muttered, pulling the PDA back out and studying the map for a bit longer. "Okay, here's an alternate route we can take, through this oxygen plant, then this heat generating room."

They located the entrance to their secondary route and continued their journey. As Jack approached the door that would take them into the oxygen plant, he hesitated. A chill rippled through him. Gripping his SMG more tightly, he gathered his courage and opened the door. A pitch black room waited beyond. Stifling the urge to curse, he activated his flashlight and pointed it in through the door. A narrow path between two huge, rectangular pieces of silvery machinery covered with screens and nodes and buttons was revealed.

"Crap," he muttered, then set off.

The oxygen plant was still functional, which was reassuring, but it presented a problem, because it was loud. He moved slowly down the narrow alcove, gun tucked tightly into his shoulder. He reached its end and stepped out, finding himself in an open space between several more large pieces of machinery. There were a good dozen dark niches in practically every direction where something could possibly hide.

There were also three more alcoves snaking away into the darkness. Jack played his light across the alcoves and the niches between the machinery. He froze as the light came to rest on the face of an Imp. Being discovered, it issued a hissing shriek and geared up to throw a fireball at him. Jack didn't give it a chance, squeezing out a burst of fire and punching holes in its hideous alien face. Thick ruby blood sprayed the machinery around it. He heard several more shrieks and a few groans as everything else in the mechanical maze became aware of their presence. What was it with this damned moon and tight spaces!?

"Incoming!" Jack called.

He spun as he heard a hiss from his left and saw another Imp crawling along the ceiling. Cursing, he aimed and fired, stitching a line of bloody holes up its back. It lost its grip and slammed into the metal floor. He put it down with a shot to its temple, then turned and blew a zombie's head off as it lurched into view down one of the alcoves. A second one stumbled into view and he finished off his magazine killing it.

No Z-Sec down here, at least.

Although they were the ones with ammo usually.

He heard the others opening fire around him as more Imps and zombies tried to claw their way into the opening.

"Push forward!" Blackmore called.

Jack moved forward, into the alcove he'd murdered the two zombies in as he slammed a fresh magazine into his SMG. Down to the last one now. He ran down the length of the alcove, found himself in another opening, this one smaller, and then screamed as an Imp leaped at him. He brought his SMG up in between them and bashed the thing in the face, sending it stumbling backwards. He brought his weapon up again to kill it, but then felt heavy hands fall on his shoulders. He was yanked backwards and fell into a second Imp.

Falling onto his back as the thing lost its grip on him, he aimed up and loosed a spray of bullets into its sexless crotch. Blood and gore splashed down onto his visor. The thing shrieked and staggered away from him. Jack aimed forward, towards the other, and prepared to blow it away, but its head disappeared in a plume of dark red gore as someone else discharged a shotgun shell. Jack scrambled to his feet.

"Come on!" Thompson called, stepping into the opening.

With the others at his back, Jack plunged into the next alcove, now following the immense Marine as he led the way. Thompson paused at the head of the alcove and fired his huge gun, killing several zombies from the sound of it. Once they were dead, he rushed on. The next area was larger and held the exit. Thompson opened fire again as Jack crossed the room and slapped the open button. He let out a shout of surprise as an Imp appeared in the doorway and he shot up its chest, then kicked it back into another pair of zombies.

He put them both down with headshots and then moved on into the next corridor that connected the oxygen plant to the heat room. The whole area seemed alive with activity. He could hear the others pounding down the hallway behind him. Jack hit its end and punched the close button. The heat room was larger and more open and had actual freaking light! He couldn't see anything alive. He secured the area while the others rushed in and once the last one was through, the door was closed and locked. They kept pushing.

The squad managed to make it quickly through the heat room. Unfortunately, the fact that this next room was easy to get through didn't mean much because the final exit to the tunnel that would take them to the Computer Station was blocked off by a locked down pressure door. Jack felt his patience beginning to wear thin as he stared up at the huge silver door.

"Well, this is great," Blackmore growled. He walked over to the console next to the door and took a moment to search it over. He heaved a sigh. "Apparently this pressure door was tripped during the invasion. We need to get to a control room and unlock it."

Blackmore led them down a side passageway. Jack plodded after him. He was getting tired and his stomach was growling now, switching between extreme hunger and roiling terror. He shook every now and then and he couldn't tell if it was from low blood sugar or adrenaline or fear, he hated it all the same. He needed this to be over soon, he was definitely developing some cracks in his psychological armor. This was getting to be a bit much. But he told himself he could do this, he could keep it together…

He _had_ to.

All they had to do was unlock the door, get down the tunnel, through the Computer Station and to the Phobos Anomaly. Then blow that thing to hell and call for help and last long enough for someone to come up and rescue them.

And then they could nuke this place from orbit as far as he was concerned.

Just a bit longer. Just a bit farther. He'd trained his entire life for something like this...except that he'd never imagined he'd face down something like _this_. Fighting goddamned zombies and alien demons in space, forced to battle through an isolated base where the walls were painted in blood and the bodies were stacked like firewood in every room. As they reached the end of the corridor they were in and moved through the large transitional chamber, they ran into another problem. The control room was locked down.

Blackmore showed great restraint by not screaming a string of curses. Luckily, there was a security center nearby and they discerned that the blue keycard they needed to raise the lockout wasn't all that far away, apparently tucked away in an abandoned storage bay. Frustrated and paranoid more than ever, the squad of battered and battle-weary survivors left the main transitional room and headed off down another wrecked corridor.

They found the entrance to the storage room at its end in the form of another large, dented silver door stamped with the UAC logo. The Marines got into position. Jack hit the button. The door slid open, up, into the ceiling. He stared into the bay beyond. It was large, scattered with bodies and crates, cast in a flickering, broken light. There were no immediately obvious threats, but...something was wrong.

He didn't know what, but something about the bay bothered him.

"Move in...slowly," Blackmore murmured.

The team moved in. Jenkins stayed at the entrance to watch their back. They moved carefully into the large underground room, spreading out, playing their lights over the darker areas. Jack's light passed over crates, blood and bodies. He hesitated as his light fell across something blue. Focusing in, he saw that he'd located the blue keycard. It was still held in a severed hand. It was about twenty feet away, deeper into the bay.

"Found the card," he said.

Blackmore and the others moved to join him. "We'll cover you," he said.

Jack nodded and began moving forward. Something shifted in the bay. He hesitated, listening intently. He could hear breathing. Heavy breathing. He'd made it about half the distance. Jack played his light again across the area, his combat senses screaming at him. The light froze as he spied some kind of movement.

"What the f..." he whispered.

Suddenly, the movement started up again and he heard heavy, meaty footfalls. All at once, with a crashing revelation of terror, he realized what he was looking at.

"Spectre!" he called, hosing the thing down.

The monster roared as blood flew on the air and accelerated towards him. Jack emptied his SMG and still the thing didn't go down. He heard the others opening fire, but only one stream of bullets blew past him and hit the nearly invisible beast. The others were opening up on several more shadowy figures. Dropping his spent SMG, he brought his chaingun around, aimed and fired. _That_ did the trick. Jack put the thing down with a few shots from the chaingun, then turned the stream on another Spectre that had appeared beside the other and put it down with the remainder of the bullets in the gun. There was no time for a reload.

He let it hang, pulled out his last resort weapon, his sidearm, and aimed at yet another Spectre as it lumbered towards him, roaring bloody hell. Jennifer appeared at his side, shotgun in hand, and together they put the thing down, punching holes in its broad frame. As it fell, the gunfire fell silent. "That's the last of them," Blackmore said finally.

Jack let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding and finished his job. He marched over, grabbed the bloodied keycard and then retreated. They left the bay in a hurry and got back to the control room. Jack swiped it and moved in, pistol at ready, given that it was the only weapon he had that was loaded. There was nothing in the control room. Well, nothing alive, anyway. The bulletproof windows along two of the walls had been broken out. The window frames were ringed with bloody glass teeth.

The windows overlooked a sewage treatment plant. The control room itself was a bloodied, battered, sparking mess. It seemed like almost everything had been broken and there were at least twenty bullet-riddled, shredded, ripped-up corpses, almost all of them Marines, spread out across the square room. Judging by the sheer amount of spent shell casings and bullet holes in the walls, it seemed like this had been the site of a last stand.

Jack wondered where the enemy corpses were.

While Blackmore worked to get the pressure door raised, Jack took the opportunity to reload his chaingun, then he joined the others in searching through the fresh necropolis for ammo. There wasn't a great deal, but he managed to finally replenish his depleted shotgun. He had enough to load up with a full two reloads behind it.

"Okay, I got it, let's get the hell out of here," Blackmore said.

They began the final leg of their journey out of the sewers.


	20. EPISODE 01: Hardcore Hardware

"Clear," Jack said as he finished scouting the abandoned maintenance room he'd come into. He was glad to be out of the damned sewers.

He maintained watch while the others got up out of the narrow shaft one by one. The room looked like it was hit brutally hard. Blood ran in trails along the floor, where it looked like corpses had been dragged for some reason. There were spent shell casings, pieces of corpses and debris scattered everywhere. But, probably the most frightening aspect of the room was the disturbingly low light level. The lights overhead were dim and weak.

Jack tried to recall what the Computer Station looked like. If he remembered right, it was a tall, upright, strangely structured building. It appeared to have something like three main levels, and now they were at the bottom. As he approached the door, Jack wondered how bad it was. He opened the only door in the room and looked out, then got an idea of how bad it was. The corridor beyond was pitch black, and what little of it was revealed by the maintenance bay's thin light showed only dented metal and blood.

"Well, this sucks," he muttered, leaning out and peering left, then right.

"Yep," Blackmore said, joining him. "It sucks more because on the way over, it occurred to me that we should probably take a look at the mainframe. There's gotta be a lot of information stored here and we should probably have a look at it."

"Yeah, I guess so," Jack replied morosely.

He wasn't looking forward to spending any amount of time in this place, let alone _more_ time.

"Also," Blackmore continued, "we should be able to access the base's LifeScan through here. We'll be able to determine if there are any other survivors on this moon."

"That would be good to know," Jennifer said.

Jack sighed heavily and flipped on the flashlight at the end of his shotgun. "Well, let's get started," he said.

His ammo situation hadn't really improved. Currently, his SMG and one of his pistols were spent, totally dry. He'd left the last remaining magazine for his pistols in one of the sidearms, in case of emergency. The chaingun was reloaded, but he wanted to keep that for emergency too. The shotgun was loaded, but it only had one more reload left. He'd found some ammo down there in the sewers, but he'd expended a lot getting to the Computer Station. He felt like he was kind of constantly riding the edge of ammo depletion.

It was pretty stressful.

Jack took point again, heading for the left for now. It seemed to be his specialty. As he moved down the darkened passageway, playing his light across closed doors and broken vent grates, he thought for the hundredth time that it was a goddamned miracle he was still alive. Phobos Base had death written all over it in eight dozen different languages. He reached the end of the corridor and hit the access button.

The door opened to reveal an Imp in the process of walking towards him. Jack didn't even give it a chance to shriek. He was already aiming his shotgun at the right height, so he just adjusted the aim a little and squeezed the trigger. The Imp's head, caught in the beam's light, vaporized in a thick, chunky plume of dark gore. Further on in the pitch black room, Jack heard several more hisses and about half a dozen spots suddenly lit up with the awful red glare of hellfire. He snapped out a curse, aimed and fired at the nearest one.

The Imp fell, a hole in its chest, but he was already moving, making way for the others to give him some damned backup. The others spilled into the room and they managed to clean it out in record time. They put down the half-dozen Imps that had been hanging around, then the small squad of Z-Sec zombies that arrived to investigate all the noise. Once they were sure they were alone, at least for the moment, they searched the area. It seemed they'd come to a very rudimentary central nexus for the bottom of the facility, which was very threadbare and utilitarian. The walks were a stark, slate gray concrete, or probably it was made of regolith from Phobos' surface. It was cracked and covered in ash and blood.

Jack played his light across the right wall and spied three pairs of silver doors. Elevators. Their ticket out of the lowest level. And of course none of them worked. But he figured that would be case. What was more annoying was when he tried the door that led to the stairwell and found that it was firmly locked, and it would take a lot of firepower to get through it. A few moments later, after checking out a security room and booting up a terminal that was still running on minimal power, they confirmed that, yes, there was another lockdown in effect.

He was beginning to suspect that it was mandatory.

"All right," Blackmore rumbled as he finished investigating the ruined security center. "We've got a miserable task ahead of us. We're going to have to find a pair of keycards and restart a pair of auxiliary generators if we're going to raise this lockout and make any progress. Gather round," he said, still standing before the terminal screen.

They gathered round him.

"As you can see, we're in the guts of the building. The first floor is all maintenance and utilities. The first generator is on the far side of this water reclamation plant. Ward, you and Taylor will hunt it down. And keep your eye out for any keycards. Unfortunately the tracking system is out. Thompson, Jenkins and I will make our way through this heat exchange and power distribution plant to get to the second generator."

"Affirmative," Jack replied, not looking forward to another long walk through the dark.

They split up. At least he had Jennifer with him. They made their way back down the original corridor they'd emerged from and walk to its opposite end. Jennifer got into position, gun aimed at the door, while Jack opened it up. She fired once, her shotgun booming loudly in the confined space, then gave the initial clear. They walked into the room beyond. Their lights punched holes in the darkness, revealing a large, confused network of piping and machinery. Lots and lots of places for nasty hostiles to hide.

They began making their way slowly through the proliferation of pipes and equipment, their flashlights casting bright reflections off the shiny chromed surfaces and making the shadows swell and shrink and sway. Jennifer was in the lead and Jack was backing her up, shotgun ready. They crept down the center of the room, listening intently for signs of life, moving around a large workstation covered with sticky notes.

Suddenly, there was a light, somewhere up ahead.

A light like an open flame.

"Lost Soul," Jennifer hissed, then aimed, fired and popped it.

A general roar went up. Jack cursed, spun to his right and pounded out a round, blowing the arm off an Imp. He pumped the shotgun and fired again, blowing a second Imp in half as the shot took it in its midriff. He grunted in pain as an explosion of heat smacked him in the back. Spinning around, he saw an Imp was dangerously close to him. He stuck the shotgun in its mouth and squeezed the trigger. Its head came apart like a watermelon with a grenade in it. He and Jennifer worked their way slowly, meticulously, through the water reclamation plant, and put down a good dozen Imps by the time they reached the generator room.

Once they got inside the small side room and cleared it, Jack fed the last eight of his shells into his shotgun and swapped for his pistol.

"Okay, guard the door, I can handle the generator," Jennifer said.

"Got it," Jack replied, closing the only door in and taking watch. A few minutes of silence passed as Jennifer worked to bring the generator online.

"So," she said suddenly, without apparent provocation, "I, uh, like you."

He glanced briefly at her. She was crouched, face hidden, hands buried within an open panel on the side of the generator.

"I like you, too," he replied, unsure of what else to say.

"No, I mean, like...for more than just the sex or as a friend. I mean-what I'm trying to say..." She heaved a sigh. "I'm bad at this shit. I haven't met someone like you in a really long time. A good-looking guy who's smart, capable and competent, can fight like hell, respects me, is confident without being arrogant and is awesome in bed. What I'm trying to say is that you're a real catch, and when we make it out of here, I'd be interested in a real relationship."

"You're wrong," he said, finally.

She looked back at him, startled. "What?"

"You're not bad at this. That was clear, concise and to the point. And I'd be very interested in a real relationship," he replied.

She let out a short laugh and grinned, then turned back to the generator.

"Good. I'm glad we got that sorted out."

Suddenly, there was a pop. Jennifer cursed and pulled her hands back. At the same time, the lights flickered and came to life, banishing the darkness and turning the pitch black, nightmarish environment into a place of bright lights and nowhere near as many hiding places. "There," she said, closing the panel and standing up, "done."

"And we got ourselves a bonus," Jack said.

She followed his gaze, curious, and saw what he had seen. Across the room, on a foldout table, discarded among a handful of tools and spare parts, was a blue keycard. Jack crossed the room, grabbed it and pocketed it.

"Maybe our luck is starting to change," he said.

Their radios crackled to life. _"This is Blackmore. We need backup. We're in power distribution chamber. Over."_ He punctuated each sentence with a burst of gunfire.

"We're on our way. Out," Jack replied, already making for the door.

* * *

They hit the heat exchange barely a few minutes later, finding a string of dead zombies, and could hear the sounds of the rest of their squad battling it out amidst a haze of gunfire. They sprinted through the room, sweeping the area with their gazes and muzzles, finding it empty, then burst onto the scene seconds later.

Blackmore, Thompson and Jenkins were crouched down behind a series of workstations in the center of the room, being attacked from all sides by a clutch of Z-Secs. Jack and Jennifer got to work. Deciding it was high time to put his chaingun to use, he let the shotgun hang and brought the big silver bastard into play. There were a trio of dark-armored jerks off to his left, fairly exposed, unaware that new players had entered the field.

Their last mistake.

Jack aimed and let loose.

A hail of bullets, like the wrath of God, slammed into them and punched a dozen holes each into their bodies, practically shredding them. Jack turned the array of bullets onto another pair of them that emerged from a side entrance and painted the silver walls with their blood. He ended up completely draining the thing dry by putting down another eight Z-Sec monstrosities. The others finished off the last of the zombies.

"Now that's what I call backup," Blackmore said, coming up from behind his cover. "Good job, Marines."

"Thanks, Sergeant," he replied.

"Secure this ammo. I'll go get the generator," Blackmore said, and headed off.

The four of them worked quickly, and Jack managed to find another three magazines for his pistol and three more for his depleted SMG. He let the spent chaingun hang and reloaded his secondary sidearm and the SMG, selecting it as his primary weapon for the moment. By the time they'd finished up, Blackmore had the secondary generator back up.

"Any luck with any keycards?" he asked.

"Yep, found a blue one," Jack replied.

"Perfect. Now help us find the other one."

They spent another fifteen minutes hunting through the area, and finally ran down a red security card clipped to the belt of a dead Sergeant at the back of a bathroom, sitting in the final stall, his head blown off. From there, it was a simple procedure to get back to the security center, raise the lockout and then take the stairwell up to the top.

* * *

They had to seal their envirosuits when they got to the very top of the Computer Station. Much like Command Control, the most important, and sensitive, control and information was at the very top. It was a bit like an air traffic control tower, only most of the room was taken up by a huge, solid block of equipment, machinery, mainframes and technology. Workstations ringed the exterior of the room and there was a narrow walkway in between the workstations and the tech core. The reason they had to seal their suits was because the windows were broken out and the atmosphere was totally compromised within the room.

The first thing they did was get into the databanks, the hallowed digital vaults of Phobos Base. Blackmore apparently had a penchant for skirting the edges of protocol and settled in to work. At the same time, Jennifer took up residence at another workstation and tried to fire up the LifeScan. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work.

"Run a diagnostic," Jack suggested.

" _Yeah, hopefully it's something minor,"_ she murmured. They had to talk on the shortwave radios now that their suits were sealed.

A minute later, they had their answer. She sighed. _"Okay, I can fix it. But I've got to get up into that core there,"_ she said, pointing at the huge block of tech in the center of the room. _"I just have to do a quick replacement."_

"Sergeant?" Jack asked.

" _Take care of it. Ward, provide backup,"_ Blackmore replied, distracted.

The pair of them headed to the tech core and walked around it until they located a small maintenance lift. It was just big enough to admit the pair of them. They lowered it and found the platform caked with flash-frozen blood. Cautiously, they stepped aboard and rode it up. It was slow and ominous. At first their view was just of a wall of intricate circuitry beneath a layer of plexiglass. Then, slowly, they were finally raised up to where they were going. Jack discovered that there was a whole sort of attic above the tech core.

It was poorly lit and very obvious that several someones had met a brutal end here. Jack played his light across the tight area. The ceiling was low, giving the whole place a claustrophobic feel. Several frozen corpses were scattered here and there. They left the service lift and moved slowly through the dark area.

They passed a dead Imp and then a dead Z-Sec. The Imp had been riddled with bullets, one eye ruptured, turned into a bloody crater. He found himself wondering what had killed the Z-Sec zombie as they passed it.

The zombie's gloved hand shot out, suddenly, wrapping around his ankle.

Jack let out a startled shout and blew the thing's head off.

" _Everything okay up there?"_ Blackmore asked.

"Uh...yeah...yeah, just a zombie," he replied.

" _Understood."_

" _You okay?"_ Jennifer asked.

He let out a small, nervous laugh. "Yeah. I'm fine. I've had worse scares...I think."

They finished walking through the cramped space and Jennifer found what she was looking for. She pulled a repair kit off the wall, knelt before an open panel and went to work. Jack found his gaze wandering to her ass, which still looked fantastic even in armor and an envirosuit. He blinked and shook his head, making himself focus. He kept watch until she made the repair, closed the panel and stood up.

" _Okay, that should do it,"_ she said.

They headed back to the lift and rode it down. Once they'd returned to the floor, they moved back to the workstation and she booted it up.

" _Okay, I've got LifeScan,"_ she reported. _"Running it now, maximum range. It's going to take a little bit."_

" _We've got time,"_ Blackmore replied. _"I've found what's left of their data archive and I'm downloading it now."_

"Have you found anything interesting?" Jack asked.

" _Mostly more of the same, but I'm finding references to what appear to be an outpost built beyond the gateway, inside the other dimension. And I also found a partial report about specimens. Capturing them, specifically. It's obvious that they knew a lot about this and they've been doing research of some kind for awhile now."_

"What a surprise," Jack muttered.

" _Uh, guys, we have a problem,"_ Thompson said suddenly.

Jack looked up. He and Jenkins had been standing guard. Immediately, he saw the problem. There were Lost Souls outside the broken windows. A lot of them.

" _Shit,"_ Blackmore muttered. _"How long on that LifeScan, Taylor?"_

" _Thirty seconds,"_ she replied tersely.

" _Great. All right, no one move. We'll try to ride this out,"_ Blackmore replied.

The seconds began to tick by. Jack felt every one of them. He had his hands on his SMG, staring intently out of the broken windows. He could easily see a good two dozen of the flying, flaming skulls now, and more were appearing all the time. Where were they all coming from!? It seemed to take forever before Jennifer spoke again.

" _LifeScan is complete. Confirmed: we're the last five souls on this rock,"_ she reported, her voice flat and grim.

" _Great. Well, at least we didn't leave anyone behind and we don't have to worry about friendly fire,"_ Blackmore replied.

"I think our game is up, guys," Jack said. The Lost Souls were drifting closer now.

" _Okay, screw it, I've got enough data. Fall back,"_ Blackmore replied.

They began moving towards the exit, but as soon as they did, the Lost Souls began making beelines straight for them.

" _Go! Go! Go!"_ Blackmore yelled, firing and bursting one of the nearer ones in absolute silence. Jack kept moving, leading the retreat as he'd been closest to the door. He reached it, hit it and moved beyond, securing the room. He kept watch as the others hurried in through the door, firing the whole way. Once the last one through, Thompson, was clear, he closed the door and locked it. He let out a long sigh of relief.

" _Okay,"_ Blackmore said. _"Get ready people, this is the endgame. Stay sharp and we'll all get out of this alive."_

Jack hoped that the man was right. They began to head for the last tram to the Phobos Anomaly.


	21. EPISODE 01: Phobos Anomaly

The tram rolled smoothly into its station.

Jack and the others had been preparing themselves for heavy resistance. He was imagining an army of Z-Secs, waves of Imps, a shifting, living wall of Demons. But as they played their lights out over the darkened tram receiving station, all the pale shafts of light revealed was dented, bullet-riddled, bloodstained walls. No bodies, though. Jack frowned as he continued hunting for something, anything, checking out the niches and shadows and alcoves and vents for signs of life. He couldn't see anything, then again, he was still inside the tram.

"Cover me," he said, stepping forward.

"Taylor, go with him," Blackmore replied.

Jennifer stepped up and joined him. Jack reached out and hit the doors. They slid open. The sound was terribly loud in the dead silence. The two of them carefully stepped out onto the platform. It creaked ominously beneath them. They spread out slowly, apprehension obvious in their tight movements. Three minutes ticked by with a painful lethargy as they checked the area. But there was nothing. No zombies lurked in the shadows, no Imps hid in the vents. Nothing. They finished their sweep.

"We're clear!" Jack called.

"Where the hell is everyone?" Jennifer muttered. "This should be heavily guarded."

"Maybe we got lucky," Jack replied as the others came out. "Maybe they're busy elsewhere or maybe they're pulling out. Either way, we need to take advantage while we still can, find a way to destroy that gateway."

"Couldn't agree more," Blackmore said as he joined them. "Let's go."

They crossed the platform, making their way over to the single door. It was huge, ominous, creepy as hell. The five of them gathered before it, guns ready, flashlights on. Thompson opened the door on Blackmore's command.

There was nothing living waiting for them.

Only the dead waited.

Jack spent a long moment trying to contemplate what he was seeing. It was like his brain simply wasn't processing it. He remembered a similar situation happening during one his first times seeing combat. He'd been in Peru, guarding a base from an assault by a local mercenary force. One of them had fired a rocket and it had hit somewhere nearby. Jack had been sprayed with blood and he'd turned and that same thing had happened. Something was wrong with the man who had been fighting beside him a moment before.

But he just couldn't tell what.

He remembered that he'd kept blinking, like he had something in his eye, and then finally it had kicked in, his brain had finally caught.

His head was missing.

It had been taken clean off by a flying piece of shrapnel.

Only this was worse. A lot worse.

They were standing at the beginning of a very long corridor that was cast in a broken, flickering light, though this light did not come from malfunctioning bulbs, but from candles. They were attached to the walls in pairs, stretching away from them. And the walls themselves, they were stonework, not metal, and not the kind of stone they'd seen so far, built from lunar regolith. This was the kind of heavy brickwork you might see in a castle.

But, worst of all, were the bodies.

There had to be dozens of them at least. They were crucified to the walls, stripped naked, spidery trails of blood emanating from their wrists and ankles, pooling on the floor. Their heads hung limply to their chests and their faces were still caught in a rictus, a visage of pain and agony. The hallway seemed to go on for a while.

"How?" he heard himself ask softly.

"Come on," Blackmore said gruffly. "We need to keep pushing."

He took the first step into the hallway, and that seemed to lift some of the haze that had descended over Jack's mind. He shook himself, steeled himself for lay ahead, and joined Blackmore. They began moving slowly down the corridor, single file, down the dead center. Jack tried not to look at the dead, but it was difficult. There were just so many of them, and he hadn't ever actually seen someone crucified before.

It was horrifying.

As the paroxysm of terror continued to fade, losing its grip, other thoughts began to sneak into his skull. "I just realized something," he said.

"What?" Blackmore replied, sounding alarmed.

"This can't be part of the original design. The stone bricks. The candles. I mean...where did all this come from?"

Blackmore stopped walking and looked around. It must have just occurred to him as well. Finally, he started walking again. "A question for the ages," he replied.

Jack wasn't satisfied, but he supposed it didn't matter. They still had to keep on pushing. Maybe the UAC really was this crazy and built it like this. Or maybe they found it like this? He still wasn't entirely clear on how much had been inherited and how much had been constructed. Finally, slowly, like a bad tooth ache or a migraine, the hallway came to an end. Somehow, getting to the end was worse than walking through it.

"Careful now," Blackmore murmured, his voice heavy with worry.

The door, which was of the same silver design as most of the other doors in the base, looked very out of place among the stonework masonry. The control panel was still there, at least. Blackmore reached out and hit the button.

The door slid up into its niche.

"Wow," Jack heard himself say.

An immense room, almost like a cavern in a cave, awaited them. It was at least well-lit, though Jack wasn't entirely sure where the light was coming from. It seemed ambient, like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere. And the fact that it was a reddish-orange light didn't help. The area was totally flat and about three hundred feet across. A dome rose over them, made of some strange stone. The remains of workstations, machinery, all manner of technology and equipment, lay scattered and dead across the floor, which was made of a strange, almost iridescent green brick. And there were a great deal of bodies, too.

Lots of corpses, shredded, chewed, broken, mangled.

In the dead center of it all, almost like an alter, was what must be the gateway. It was a large, metal disc with three huge, upright rings attached to it, all three of them locked together and inside of each other. The metal was midnight black and seemed to almost pulse with raw, dark power. On either side of the gateway were large stone slabs that looked very out of place. Slowly, the group approached the centerpiece.

They came to stand before it. Jack didn't want to get much closer. It was like standing in front of an oven, only if the heat waves were bad vibes. He didn't know how else to describe it. It was a bad, evil thing and it corrupted the very air around it. It seemed to be trembling very, very slightly, as if reality itself couldn't contain it.

"So how are we going to do this?" Jenkins asked. "I mean, how do we deal with this?"

Blackmore stepped closer to it. "Maybe we can-"

There was a bright flash and suddenly, where previously the two stone slabs had been empty, now they were occupied.

A fresh new visage of raw terror stared down at the squad.

They were demons. Genuine demons. Nine feet of solid muscle, with goat legs and big, black horns that grew out of the sides of their elongated skulls. Eyes of burning malignant red energy stared at them with all the hatred in the universe. And there was an intelligence lurking there, an awful intelligence. Their naked flesh was deep pink in color, their legs a strange green, their cloven hooves pitch black and polished.

As one, the twin beasts opened their mouths and roared. The sound froze Jack's marrow. One of the creatures stepped forward, its hoof clacking as it hit the stone, and reached for Blackmore. He stood frozen like a statue, staring up at the massive beast. It grabbed him, raised him over its head and tore him in half, armor, suit and all.

Blood showered the beasts, showered the team.

" _Open fire!_ " Jack heard himself scream.

All hell broke loose.

The SMG was in his hands, and that's what he opened up with. Taking aim, zeroing the sights straight on the massive chest of the huge creature, he squeezed the trigger and didn't let go until the gun was dry-clicking. The others opened up as well, but the creatures were already moving. One of them raised its hand and then motioned like it was throwing a baseball, but what came out of it was a solid green ball of fire or energy. It hit Thompson squarely in the chest, throwing him backwards right off his feet.

Jack emptied the Raptor and shakily reached for a reload as he was backing away. He let out a startled shout and dropped the magazine he'd been reaching for when the other demonic entity threw a second green energy ball his way. He narrowly avoided it and as he stumbled around, he felt the chaingun bump against his back. Dropping the SMG, he brought the chaingun into play. Jennifer and Jenkins were splitting up, pelting the creatures with shotgun blasts. It didn't seem to be doing very much.

The hell beasts split up. One of them was coming straight for Jack.

He looked around as he warmed the chaingun up. Thompson was still on his back, he couldn't tell if the man was alive or dead. Jenkins and Jennifer were split up, spread apart, and wouldn't be helping him. They were dealing with their own problem. The creature was stomping towards him, murder in its eyes, raising its fist for another deadly throw. Jack spun the chaingun up, ready to release a hail of red hot death.

And nothing happened.

"Oh fuck me!" he screamed, dropping the gun and throwing himself out of the way as he remembered that he'd already used the last of his ammo. He narrowly avoided another green ball of energy that seared past him. He could feel the heat coming off of it. The monster roared and continued stomping for him. He saw his discarded SMG magazine and scrambled over to it, snagging it up and slapping it into the Raptor.

Turning around, he raised the gun once more and emptied it into the huge monster, spraying down its broad chest and face with rounds. Most of them made contact, only some of them drew blood. How strong was this thing?! He grabbed for his last magazine and that's when the creature lunged for him, crossing the distance. It backhanded him and sent him flying. Jack yelled in pain as he flew through the air, then hit the hard stone floor. His SMG went flying from his hand. He could still hear the others shouting, guns firing, the second beast roaring.

As he backed away from the one he was still dealing with, unable to stop staring at its massive, terrible form built of solid muscle that looked like it was carved from granite, its huge black horns, its sneering face, he tripped over something. Crying out as he was sprawled to the floor, he realized he'd tripped over Thompson and his big chaingun. He reached over the man's charred chestplate, still unable to determine if he was alive or dead, and snagged the big silver gun. Yanking it up and around, he spun it up, aimed and fired.

This time the desired effect was achieved.

In a brilliant burst of strobing muzzle flare, a deadly metal hail slammed into the huge demonic creature. It sent the thing stumbling backwards, huge sprays of dark red gore jetting from its muscular chest. He ended up emptying the gun. By the time the magazine was spent, the beast had collapsed to the floor, unmoving in a widening pool of blood. Seeing as it was spent, he dropped the gun and grabbed his shotgun.

He turned to the other one and saw that it was definitely taking on damage. Jennifer and Jenkins had retreated to a safe distance and were continually blasting the thing with their shotguns. Jack hurried forward to help them. He ended up blasting away with every single shell he had left on him, depleting the shotgun and leaving him only with his pistol. Mercifully, as he pulled it out and prepared to continue fighting, the huge demon thing let out a tremendous roar and then toppled to the floor, crashing as it hit the stone.

An awful silence fell across the room.

Jack heard a groan. He turned and looked, spying Thompson shifting. He holstered his pistol and moved numbly over.

"Anyone get the number of that goddamned truck?" he muttered miserably. "What happened? I remember...goats...that doesn't sound right."

Jack couldn't help but laugh as he offered the big man a hand and pulled him to his feet. "You took a green energy ball to the chest."

"I never thought I'd hear that sentence," Thompson muttered. He winced and touched his chestplate, carefully probing it. "Damn lucky I didn't break a rib, though one or two of them feels kind of cracked."

"Guys, how are we going to deal with this?" Jenkins asked.

He and Jennifer had approached the gateway again. Jack and Thompson walked over, joining them. Jennifer was crouching by Blackmore's remains. Jack stared at them miserably. Their Sergeant was dead, and he'd been a good man, a good ally. He'd gotten them through the worst of this...well, Jack _hoped_ they'd already endured the worst.

"Maybe we can rustle up some explosives," Jack murmured.

"We already searched the Military Base," Jennifer replied.

"There's got to be some mining charges around here somewhere. Or maybe we can scavenge some grenades, or rockets maybe? Or oxygen tanks? I mean-"

Jack was cut off as the gateway suddenly began emitting a low hum. It surged to life, pulsing with a dark, malevolent energy.

"Back off!" Thompson called. "Everyone-"

There was a flash of bright black energy.

And then there was nothing but darkness.


	22. EPISODE 01: Situation – Unknown

**PART THREE  
** _–HORROR RISING_ _–_

* * *

He was dead.

Jack was positive that he was dead.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had this certainty locked so firmly in his skull, but it was at least a familiar one. How many times had he been sure that his life was over? How many times had he looked down the barrel of a gun? The edge of a knife? How many crashes had he survived? How much pain had he endured?

Apparently, death was cold.

This wasn't a surprise to him.

Out of instinct, Jack tried to move his body, and was surprised that he still had a body to move. He risked opening his eyes. A grainy, gray ceiling filled his vision. He sniffed the air. It smelled like blood, death, shit and oil. He was still breathing, he realized. If he was dead, he wouldn't need to breathe. Right? Jack slowly sat up.

He found himself staring at a generic stack of crates, a shelf of generic maintenance supplies and a bloodied workbench.

"What the hell?" he whispered.

Glancing down, he realized he was naked. Worse than that, he had no weapons. He had absolutely nothing on him.

He took a moment to sort through his memories. It terminated abruptly in the incident at the gateway. He remembered being sucked up into nothingness. If he had to guess, he'd place his money on the gateway activating and grabbing them. So where had they gone? Obviously somewhere with generic UAC equipment.

Jack looked down at himself again and sighed. He'd come through with nothing but himself. After all the damned work gathering the guns, the ammo, the supplies. It was all gone. Slowly, painfully, seemingly his entire body aching and sore, Jack pulled himself to his feet. He began to get his head, and his priorities, sorted out.

The first thing he needed was a weapon. That above all else. Wherever he was, he was positive that he hadn't escaped the torment of the damned that had infested Phobos. He tried to get some clue as to where he was by studying his environment, but it could have been anywhere. To give himself something to do, he began checking out the crates and the shelves in the small storage room he was in. Most of it was just spare parts, and none of the tools were lethal enough to provide any help. He needed clothing, a radio, armor, information, allies.

He needed a lot.

Right now he had jack shit.

Jack sighed in frustration as he finished his search. Glancing down at himself, he saw that he had a number of bruises, as well as some scrapes, cuts and burns. Medical supplies would have to be added to that list. Feeling a bit more in his right mind, he moved towards the only obvious direction that presented itself: the door. Walking up to it, he paused and listened, pressing his ear against the metal. He couldn't hear anything.

That didn't necessarily mean there was nothing out there.

Hesitating for a moment, he finally mustered his courage, reached out and hit the button. The door slid open to reveal...a short length of hallway and another door directly across from him. He waited, listened, heard nothing and slipped out. The hallway stretched away to his right and terminated about ten meters away to his left. As he stepped out into the corridor, Jack shivered. It was definitely cold here and that was going to be a problem.

He moved over to the other door and opened it.

Another storage room awaited his inspection.

Jack wasted fifteen minutes checking out all the rooms in the immediate area. The only thing of use he found was a small bathroom where he pissed into a urinal. Padding back out into the corridor, he moved to the open end of it, which led him to a crossroad section. Another two corridors snaked away from him, one on either side, and they looked the same as the one he'd just come from. The way ahead, however, looked different. He made his way down that shorter hallway and opened up the door at its end.

There was what appeared to be an office that served both as a security checkpoint and perhaps inventory management, providing ingress to this particular storage section. The place was a wreck and the air was hazy with smoke from a few burning consoles. Jack screwed up his eyes and coughed, and just at the worst time, too.

Out of the dark haze lurched a zombie.

"Dammit," he whispered.

He'd have to do this the old fashioned way.

He went to meet the zombie with his bare hands. It was a technician by the look of the ragged, soot and bloodstained uniform, and not a very built one at that. Jack thought he had his work cut out for him. However, as he grabbed the zombie by the throat, intending to drag it down, the thing grabbed hold of him and pulled his arms away with a shocking strength. Jack grunted as he grappled with pale monster, trying to shove it off of him.

The thing made a bite for his neck. Jack managed to get out of its grasp and leaped back. The zombie lunged for him and he narrowly avoided it. Reaching out instinctively to his left, as his combat senses told him there was something there, he found the back of a chair, grabbed it and raised it, then bashed the zombie in the face with it. The thing went stumbling, but recovered quickly and kept coming.

Jack hit it again, and again, and another time.

When it finally went down to the floor, he leaped onto it, grabbed its head, raised it up and smashed it into the floor four or five times, before its skull finally cracked and bloody brain matter began leaking out.

"Christ," he whispered, getting up and stumbling away, fighting the urge to vomit. He shook his hands vigorously, flicking droplets of coagulated blood everywhere. After taking a minute to chill out, he began searching the area, including the zombie and the two dead bodies in the room. Ultimately, he ended up wasting another five minutes. All he got for his troubles were a totally useless pistol and a combat knife.

Well, a combat knife was better than nothing.

The uniforms he found were too shredded and bloodied to be worth wearing. Knowing he had to press on if he was going to get anything done, Jack left the security ingress and stepped out into a larger, open area that obviously served as some kind of access point for a variety of wings in wherever the hell he was.

As he scanned the area for anything useful, a way to go and threats, he began to wonder where the others were. Were they alive? Was Jennifer? God, he hoped so. He'd hate to think that he was alone here now. Obviously the infestation had struck here, as well. Was he somewhere on Phobos? It was possible, though his gut told him he wasn't. So where then? Back on Mars City? Now there was a nasty thought.

Or maybe he was on Deimos?

No way to know for sure until he gathered more intel. There were a few zombies lurking in the shadowed peripheral of the room. They groaned and began coming for him as they noticed him. Thankfully they weren't Z-Sec, just the regular kind, though two of them were armed, one with a big nasty wrench and another with a clawed hammer. Wielding the knife, Jack moved forward, slowly circling so that they had to come to him one at a time. When the first one came at him, the one with the hammer, he moved quickly around it as it swung at him, missed and stumbled forward. It was the perfect opportunity.

He drove the blade into the base of the zombie's neck.

It went down like a bag of bricks. He repeated the process twice more, dropping the other two zombies and narrowly avoiding getting his skull smashed by the one holding the wrench. Once they were dead, he patted them down. Two of them were wearing maintenance uniforms, and one wore a security outfit. That one actually had a pistol on it. Relieved, though frustrated at his lack of pockets, Jack grabbed the pistol and ultimately abandoned the knife, because he needed his second hand to hold the single spare magazine of ammo.

Pistol in hand, the way clear of enemies, (for now, anyway), Jack studied his choices. There was a huge silver door at the head of the room. He had no idea where it led, but it must be important given its size. He left it alone for the moment. Back the way he had come, and two other doors, were marked _Storage_. Another led to _Offices_ , another to _Reactor_ , another to _Infirmary_ , another to _Recreation_ , which must have been a laugh.

What decided him was the sound of gunshots.

They were pistol shots and coming from one of the other storage areas. He was off and running, feet slapping against the metal as he entered the storage wing, made his way through the security checkpoint and came into the plus symbol hallways. He skidded to a halt as he came to the crossroads rooms. The gunshots were coming from the left. He spun that direction and saw a figure, facing away from him, naked and bloody, firing at an Imp. A zombie was creeping up behind her. He recognized Jennifer's fit ass as he approached her. Just as she put down the Imp, he aimed and popped off a shot, capping the zombie.

Jennifer spun around, gun raised, and nearly blew him away, a round scorching past his face, just inches away.

"Christ, Jack, I'm sorry!" she cried, lowering the gun and jogging over to him. As soon as she got to him, she wrapped him in a quick but hard hug. "I thought I was the only one."

He hugged her back fiercely, then they stepped apart, knowing they couldn't let their guard down in this place. "I did, too. I haven't seen anyone else," he replied.

"Um..." Jennifer glanced back the way she'd come. "I was, uh, checking out one of those storage rooms. I looked through a manifest and it said there were supposed to be uniforms in one room and rations in another."

"Perfect," Jack said, and they set off. "There's an infirmary out there. We can hole up in there for a little bit and get our breath back. I'm dead on my feet."

"Me too."

They managed to get into the storage rooms, grab some black security uniforms, some canteens of distilled water and some MREs without running into trouble. Once they'd secured their new supplies, (still no new weapons for now, but two pistols were a good start), they skulked through the corridors and across the main area until they hit the infirmary. It was mostly untouched, surprisingly, and empty of enemy hostiles. Once they had cleared it, they locked it down as well as they could, then slipped into the bathroom and shower area at the back. After setting their supplies on a nearby counter, they got into a shower stall together.

Jack turned up the water as hot as they could stand it. When he turned back around, he saw Jennifer staring at him intently. He felt something, suddenly powerful, overwhelmingly so, stirring within him. It wasn't lust, not exactly, though it felt very similar just then. He thought it might be more like the thrilling excitement of surviving a crazy-ass experience that should have killed you a dozen times over, combined with lust.

He and Jennifer came together, kissing fiercely, passionately.

He pushed her up against the nearest wall and she jumped up, wrapping her legs around him. He caught her and held her.

Their lovemaking session was short, but fierce, fiery and furious.

When they were finished, they stayed together, embracing, for several seconds, before getting back to the task at hand.

"So, um...how are you?" Jennifer asked after a moment, once their pulses had settled back to normal and their brains weren't so intoxicated with raw desire.

"Doing a lot better now," Jack replied.

She snorted, grinning slyly, and he felt a wave of calm and happiness roll over him. What they were doing right now was just so...normal. So human. It was like the eye of a bloody hurricane, a moment of peace, desperately needed downtime.

"I'm so glad I found you," he said. It felt like a stupid, obvious thing to say, but by God, did he mean it.

"I'm glad I found you, too," Jennifer replied. "We should probably finish up."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, knowing our luck, there's an Imp sneaking in here right now. Although, it's too bad..." he said, studying her.

"What's too bad?" she asked.

"Naked and bloody is actually like a _wicked_ hot look for you," he replied.

She laughed and rolled her eyes. "I'll keep that in mind for when we get into the fetish part of our relationship."

They grabbed bars of soap and quickly scrubbed themselves down. The cuts Jack had accumulated stung, then felt better under the barrage of soap and hot water. Once they were clean, they killed the water, got out and dried off. With that out of the way, they took the time to give themselves some medical treatment, patching up and cuts, scrapes or abrasions, and injecting each other with universal antibiotic/anti-virals. To top it off, they downed some painkillers that wouldn't take their edge off, but were powerful enough to deal with their numerous aches and pains. With that out of the way, they pulled on fresh underwear, socks, uniforms and boots. As Jack zipped the black security jumpsuit up, he began to feel whole again.

Food came next.

They found a mini-fridge among the contents of the infirmary and raided it. No food, but there was most of a twelve pack of Mountain Dew Lightyear left, and it was nice a chilled. Jack snagged two of the bright yellow-green cans, eager for some soda, and so did Jennifer. They sat and then wolfed down their meals, trying not to eat and drink too fast.

"Man," Jack said between bites as he studied the can, "how the hell long has Mountain Dew been around? My freaking grandfather remembered drinking it, and said that his dad had been drinking it, too."

"Dunno. But it has to be a long while. This latest edition is pretty good," she replied.

They finished their meals and then sat back, though only for a little while. After maybe two minutes, Jack sighed and sat back up. "We probably need to keep moving. Jenkins and Thompson must be around here somewhere," he said.

Jennifer nodded and stood. "You're right. Now that I'm clean and dressed and fed, I can actually think straight again."

Jack stood. "Let's get back to it."


	23. EPISODE 01: Entering Devastation

They made sure to each grab Stimpacks on their way out. Jack would've liked to grabbed a full Medikit, but it was too big to attach to his belt, so he had to settle for the smaller Stimpack that contained the bare basics of an emergency medical kit.

"Where should we start?" Jennifer asked, studying the large antechamber.

Jack looked around, then pointed at the offices. "There's as good a place as any, I guess," he replied.

They struck off towards it, crossing the desolate metalwork area. Somewhere, he heard the groan of a zombie, and that strange clicking-gurgle sound that he'd come to associate with Imps. No signs of fighting, though. No shouts, no running footfalls, no gunshots. Did anyone else make it? Surely they weren't the only two left?

They hit the office complex and found themselves among a field of cubicles. Jack could see zombies lurking, their heads sticking up over the tops of the cubicle walls. The place was a wretched mess, just like everywhere else.

"Let's get to it," Jack said, raising his pistol.

They cleared out the offices. He felt good, better than he had for a while, since hitting Phobos at least, as he hunted down the zombies. No Z-Secs here, thankfully. Though that meant much less chance at finding any ammo. The food, the shower, and the sex had revitalized him. He made his way between bloody cubicles, scattered with office supplies like a particularly bad storm had blown through, and put holes in zombie skulls.

They were fairly easy targets and he managed a one shot, one kill policy the whole way through. Only took up one whole magazine to do so, though, unfortunately, they couldn't find any more ammunition. He reloaded his last magazine and they proceeded to search the office a bit more thoroughly, but there was nothing worth taking. Suppressing a heavy sigh, some of his, well...good cheer wasn't the right word, but his zeal, seeped out of him.

"Where to now?" he murmured as they left the complex.

Jennifer began to respond, but it was decided for them when they heard gunshots. Jack felt his pulse spike. Another survivor. The shots were coming from the power station. The two of them took off running, boots banging hollowly on the metal deckplates. They were pistol shots. Jack realized, as they hurried in through the big metal collar that ringed the entrance, that it could just be a pissed off zombie shooting at an Imp or Demon that had bumped it, but he didn't think so. His instincts told him otherwise, for whatever reason.

It was the gunshots themselves, he realized as they passed into a bloody, sparking antechamber and broke left, plunging into a dim tunnel, lit mainly by broken power junctions sporadically spitting blue-white sparks. The shots were too measured, too deliberate. The zombies all just popped off, pray and spray, even the Z-Secs.

They pounded down the doorway and hit a T-junction. The gunshots had stopped. He skidded to a halt, looking left and then right indecisively.

"Hello?" he called out in frustration. "Is anyone there?!"

"Jack?!" came the reply.

It was Jenkins. The voice came from the left.

"We're coming to you!" Jack called, running off. Jennifer followed after him. They passed several offshoot alcoves, glancing down each, looking for hostiles. He didn't see any, but most of the alcoves were pitch-dark.

They found Jenkins, naked and bloody, in a control room with smashed consoles, walled by smashed equipment, amid a small collection of dead zombies and Imps. He had on a torn, bloody pair of pants and blood-spattered boots, a pistol in hand.

"Christ it's good to see you," he whispered, then he looked disappointed.

"What?" Jack asked as they walked into the room. "You look disappointed."

"Well, I was hoping I'd get to see Taylor before she found her clothes," he replied.

They both stared at him for several seconds, then began to laugh. It was a stupid thing to say, he thought, but for some reason it was hilarious. Maybe they all just needed a laugh. "Okay," he said, "have you seen anyone else?"

Jenkins shook his head morosely, his humor gone. "No, no one. Just these assholes. You?"

"No, just us. Although I guess the only one left would be Thompson. He's big and badass, I'm sure he's running around here, butt-ass naked, smashing zombie skulls into the wall and tearing Imp arms off and beating them to death with them," Jack replied.

Jennifer and Jenkins laughed again, though not as loudly as before.

"Where'd you get those uniforms?" Jenkins asked.

"Supply room. Come on, let's search the area, then we'll get you to an infirmary nearby. You can shower and change and get something to eat," Jack replied.

They searched the area and only managed to find a single magazine of ammo, which Jenkins took because he'd expended his. They only had one scare on the way back through the derelict power station. As Jack passed one of the darkened alcove, he barely noticed a flickering yellow light in time. Spinning instinctively, he raised his pistol and popped off four shots, turning the rogue Lost Soul into a rain of bleached bone.

"Fuck," he whispered, looking around for any more enemies. "That was close." There was nothing else around, and they managed to get to the infirmary without further incident. While Jenkins stripped and showered, Jack left Jennifer to guard the area while he jogged over to the storage area and retrieved a spare uniform, boots and an MRE. He made it back to the infirmary and left the clothes on the counter in the shower area, then joined Jennifer in the main room. They both sat in companionable silence until Jenkins emerged, freshly dressed.

"That's so much better," he muttered as he sat down and tore into the MRE. While he ate, he had questions. "So, any idea where we are?"

"No," Jack replied.

"I think we might be on Deimos," Jennifer said. They glanced at her. "It stands to reason that this is the Deimos Anomaly. Where else would the Phobos Anomaly gateway lead that looks like this?" she asked.

She had a point. "So where's the gateway?" Jenkins asked.

"Through that big silver door out there," Jack murmured. "Who wants to bet that it's locked the hell down and needs eighteen keycards?"

"Just our luck," Jenkins muttered.

He finished his food and downed two cans of Mountain Dew, then most of a canteen.

"Well...now what?" he asked, looking at the two of them.

"We should go back through the gateway," Jack said. Now they both looked at him. "Well, it makes sense, right? I mean, we go back through, keep going with the plan. Find a way to destroy the gateway, then call for a pickup. I mean, we've killed a lot of assholes over there, so it'll be less dangerous on Phobos than Deimos."

"Who says we can even turn the gateway on?" Jennifer replied. "Or that we can link them? This is either very high tech or alien tech..."

Jack sighed. She had another point. "Let's just...get there first," he said. She nodded. "In the meantime, I say we hit those storage areas first and see if we can find more supplies. We've got no idea what's between here and home, and we'd be idiots not to take advantage of this eye in the storm, you know?"

"Yeah," Jennifer replied. "Good idea."

Jenkins was nodding. It looked like he was back in charge again, apparently. He missed Blackmore. He didn't like being in charge, he just wanted to get shit done. Then again, having other people to help and listen to you typically meant it got done faster. Whatever, they needed to keep going. It wasn't over yet, though he still clung grimly to the hope that the end was close. Centering himself, Jack led the pair of Marines out of the infirmary. There were things he needed: a rucksack, armor, more guns and ammo, but he didn't exactly have much hope of finding any of it around. His luck hadn't been all that great just lately.

Then again, he was still alive and intact.

They started off in the storage wing he'd woken up in and wasted twenty minutes poking through the various rooms. There was nothing that could be useful for their hard journey ahead. They moved on to the second wing, the one he'd found Jennifer in, and repeated the process. There were just a few lingering zombies in some of the rooms that went down easily enough, and this search was a bit more fruitful. They managed to find rucksacks. He missed this big, huge backpack model from when he'd lost it coming through the gate and was glad to have another one. Now that they had the packs, they stored several canteens and MREs for future use.

Unfortunately, they didn't find anything else. No armor, no more guns, no ammo, no radios or cool pieces of tech that might help them endure and survive. Ultimately, the three of them came back to the main room and gathered before the huge silver door. Jack wasn't sure how to take it when he discovered that no, the door wasn't locked down and, in fact, all that it took to open it up was the push of a button.

"Good omen or bad?" Jenkins murmured.

"No idea, be ready," Jack replied.

Pistols drawn, the three of them moved into a large antechamber beyond. It seemed like a huge airlock.

"Okay, _that_ is a bad goddamned omen," Jennifer said as they finished coming into the room.

Jack had to agree with her. They all saw it right away when they came into the room. It was in the wall right next to the entrance, initially hidden from sight until you came into the room. It was a visage of true horror.

Thompson was dead.

Apparently, when they had been tossed through time and space by the gateway, Thompson had been teleported into the wall. About half of his head, most of one arm, some of his chest, one knee and one foot were sticking out of the wall. All the exposed parts had leaked blood. He had a kind of grim grin on his face, so at least he'd gone out smiling, but Christ, what a nasty way to go, especially for a Marine.

"Damn," Jack whispered.

It was just the three of them now.

With nothing else to do, the three of them silently moved on, heading over to the other side of the room, where the door was partially open. It was a split down the middle kind of door and one half had slid partially into its niche. It sparked periodically, sending wisps of black smoke into the air. Jack led the way through the opening.

"Damn," he muttered as he came into the huge room beyond.

It was a large arena style room with concentric rings lowering into the ground ahead of them. All of it was centered around the gateway. Or what had once been the gateway. All that was left in the dead center of the room was twisted metal.

"Well, there goes that plan," Jennifer said.

Jack sighed and walked slowly into the room, taking in the devastation. There were workstations and consoles and terminals everywhere, all along the lowering rings of metal, and they were all smashed and gutted. Bits of bodies, spent shell casings and more blood was mixed in. God, he'd waded through an ocean of blood by now.

Suddenly, from somewhere overhead, Jack heard a hissing sound. It sounded distinctly organic. Jerking in terror, he stared up and saw something so totally different that he had no idea what to do. It was a floating, beach ball horror. It was red. That was the most immediately obvious thing. It was a deep, deep red that made him think of the lowest pits of hell. It was round and it hovered down at him from the ceiling.

A single huge eye of iridescent green stared at him with a black slit of a pupil. An enormous grinning mouth, filled with huge canine teeth, seemed to smile with an insane kind of malignancy, a cruel humor. Its spherical form was ringed by dull gray spikes, most of them coming out of its top and its bottom.

" _What the fuck is that?!_ " Jenkins shrieked.

That seemed to snap Jack back to reality. Just in time, too. The thing opened its mouth wider and abruptly, a ball of blue-yellow flame emerged from it, coming straight for him. Jack dove out of the way, felt the heat of the fireball as it scotched past him. Not another one that shot things! He rolled onto his back, aimed up with the pistol and hammered out every last round in the sidearm. At the same time, Jenkins and Jennifer opened up as well. Holes opened up on the creature and dark red gore spilled out as it spun and fired on the other two, spitting balls of fire at them. By the time his last shot was fired, the thing was looking bad.

Suddenly, it let out a bellow of furious pain and then seemed to deflate slightly. It began to fall right towards him. Jack rolled out of the way just in time. The new horror hit the floor with a wet smack. Jennifer and Jenkins jogged over to him, running down the steps to the second level where he had ended up.

"What _is_ that?" Jennifer whispered as they joined him.

Jack finished getting to his feet. "Hideous," he muttered in reply. He looked morosely at his pistol. It was dead empty now.

"We should name it," Jenkins said quietly. "We named the others."

"You seem good at it," Jack said to Jennifer.

"Well..." She seemed to consider it. "Cacodemon," she said suddenly.

"Cacodemon?" Jenkins asked uncertainly.

"Yes, Cacodemon. It fits."

Jack nodded. It did fit, strangely. "Okay then. But, what do we do now?" he asked. He felt lost and afraid, standing there with no ammo in the ruined Deimos Anomaly, staring again at the shredded remains of their first Cacodemon.

"We keep going," Jennifer said. "Same plan as before. Find a radio or a working ship. The Anomaly was what was putting out the interference signal, and this Anomaly is destroyed. So now we can complete our mission and call for help."

Jack felt a seed of hope, warm and cautiously comforting, somewhere deep inside him. She was right, he realized. All they had to do was keep pushing, get to a radio or a ship and get the hell off of this miserable rock.

"Okay," he said. "Split up, search this place. We need more ammo if we're going to do this. Keep an eye out for armor, a radio, anything useful."

They got to work. Twenty minutes passed in miserable silence. As he worked, hunting through the ruins, Jack found his mind wandering into dark places. The Cacodemon disturbed him, and not just because of how freaking creepy it looked, or because of the fact that it could shoot freaking fireballs out of its mouth.

It was its utterly bizarre appearance.

The other things he'd encountered so far, they'd been weird and out there, but, in their own way, they made a certain kind of sense. The zombies, the Imps, the Demons, he could get those...sort of. The Lost Souls had certainly been weird, and so had the Spectres. But _this_ thing was just...insane. What the hell else could come out of this nightmare? What other kind of monsters waited for them? He shook the thoughts off with difficulty.

In the end, they managed to secure five more magazines of ammo for the pistol and a fully loaded shotgun. Jack accepted one magazine and reloaded his pistol, and took the shotgun. It felt good to have, but it almost meant he'd just accepted point duty again. Shotgun in hand, Jack motioned for the others to join him at the entrance of the Anomaly.

"Let's get this over with," he said.


	24. EPISODE 01: Questionable Ethics

There was a brand new problem waiting for them when they got to the tram station, although Jack had no idea what to make of it.

"What...the...fuck?" Jenkins whispered.

Jack had to agree with him. The three of them stood together in the tram as it trundled slowly across the surface of Deimos. They had confirmed that they were on Deimos when they found a map of Deimos Base on the way out.

Directly overhead, seen through the glass ceiling and the clear tube, was the sky.

The problem was that Deimos had no sky, it was without atmosphere. It _was_ Deimos, and yet...overhead, they stared up at a swirling, shifting crimson sky.

"Could...could it be Mars?" Jack asked slowly. "Maybe...maybe the experiment screwed up Deimos' orbit?"

"I don't think so, that doesn't look like Mars," Jennifer murmured. "It's a slightly different color and that doesn't look like a normal atmosphere."

"So what is it, then?" Jenkins asked softly.

"I...I don't know," Jennifer replied.

"It doesn't matter. There's nothing we can do about it," Jack said, trying to get a grip on himself. He stepped back into the front room. "We need to stay focused."

Jennifer joined him a moment later. They had no idea where they were going. The map had called the next structure the Containment Area, so that could mean...just about anything. Most of the other buildings were the same as those over on Phobos: Military HQ, Deimos Labs, Nuclear Plant, Hangar. Up ahead, he could see the structure: a huge L shaped building with a couple of towers on top of it. The tram was heading right into the elbow of the L.

Jack fond his gaze drifting back up to that impossible crimson sky.

What could it _mean_?

He thought that he might know, somewhere deep in his battered, abused brain, but if he did, it would not bubble to the surface. The notion remained elusive, and perhaps that was for the best. A small but potent part of him thought that if he _could_ dredge the notion up from the murky depths of his mind, it might drive him crazy.

So he left well enough alone.

In the distance, he could see clusters of Lost Souls drifting soundlessly across the gray surface of Deimos, which looked no different from Phobos. Except for the crimson tint to everything. He could also see the larger, beach ball shapes of Cacodemons hovering about, apparently content to float in the vacuum of space.

Provided that's what was out there, beyond the glass.

The tram pulled into the station after cycling through the airlock. Jack stared out the windows, trying to get a feel for what kind of situation awaited them in the entrance bay. There didn't seem to be any hostiles in the immediate area. After a few moments, he finally moved back into the main cabin and over to the door.

Wordlessly, the pair of fellow Marines followed him out onto the platform.

They ran into a roadblock immediately, though this one couldn't be cured with keycards or cutting tools. The main entrance into the Containment Area was bashed in, the metal buckled and dented, wedged firmly. It wasn't going anywhere.

"Well, shit," Jack muttered.

"There has to be another way in," Jennifer replied.

They searched the platform but found nothing worthwhile, no other entrances. From there, they got down into the darkened maintenance area beneath the platform. They found the generic litter of maintenance things down there, a small bathroom that looked like an abattoir, and, finally, a workroom that had a small service lift that went only down. Jack went first, stepping into the little lift and hitting the down button.

He held the shotgun firmly in his grasp, aiming it right at the door.

Good thing, too, because a Z-Sec was waiting for him. Right as the door opened, he squeezed the trigger and punched a fist-sized hole right through its black-armored chest. The force of the blast picked the bastard up and sent it flying. Its armor spat sparks as it hit the rusty deckplates and skidded a few inches.

Jack waited a few seconds more and, when no other creatures wandered into the small antechamber ahead of him, he stepped out and sent the lift back up. Jack spent the time checking the area out a little more thoroughly, making sure nothing lurked in the shadows, but there really weren't many hiding places around. He moved over to the only door in the room and leaned against it, listening intently.

He thought he heard a deep growl at one point, but it might have been the metal shifting. Damn, he hated this place. Behind him, the lift settled back down into place. Jack spun around, suddenly paranoid that something besides his friends would step off of it, but the doors opened to reveal Jennifer and Jenkins. They stepped out, pistols drawn. Jack led them across the room to the only exit. He hit it. The door slid open to reveal a long corridor. A curious mist, steam, he realized, hung on the air, which was choked with wires and cables hanging from the ceiling.

"What the hell?" Jack muttered. "You've gotta be kidding me." His vision was utter crap down here and there were about a million hiding places. There had to be hundreds of these wires hanging from the shredded ceiling like creeper vines in a jungle. Somewhere, something growled. His muscles feeling like tempered steel, his stomach feeling like a freezer, Jack set off, tension singing through his whole body.

He began shouldering his way through the wires, shotgun tucked hard and tight to his shoulder, finger on the trigger. Jennifer and Jenkins were at least reassuring behind him. Their movement was hideously slow, as he had to stop and check out some shadowed niche every five feet or so. They managed to make their slow progress unmolested for about sixty seconds. Jack stopped, thinking he heard something, then decided he hadn't. He set off once more, pushing his way through a thick cluster of cabling.

Clawed red hands, fast and strong, shot out from the cabling and wrapped around the barrel of his shotgun. Jack screamed and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun discharged uselessly, missing the Imp. It ripped the gun from his grasp and threw it aside, then raked its claws across his chest. He screamed as burning agony ripped into him. Immediately, he felt a liquid warmth sliding down his chest. He stumbled backwards, tripped over a cable and fell flat on his ass. As soon as he was down, Jennifer and Jenkins opened fire.

He could just see the huge, red shape of the Imp through the cables. Bloody holes opened up on its chest. The thing issued a hissing shriek and tried to get a fireball out. It succeeded in doing so, but lobbed it straight into the ceiling, as useless as his own previous shotgun blast. Jack winced as he shifted, looking down at his chest.

"Shit," he whispered. Three clearly visible claw-marks had ripped through the uniform and it was soaked in blood.

"Oh damn, Jack," Jennifer said, crouching down. "That looks awful. We need to patch it up."

"Not yet," he grunted. "Gotta get somewhere safe first. Help me up."

Jennifer looked like she wanted to argue, but then she looked around and realized he had a point. So she helped him up, then found his shotgun and passed it to him. Jack gripped it for a moment, then reluctantly passed it to her. He knew she'd do more good with it than he would, but dammit, giving up a shotgun in a situation like this was hard, even if it was the logical choice. He took his pistol out, holding it with his right hand, then pressed his left hand against the wound, covering as much of it as he could and crying out hoarsely in pain as he did.

They made hurried progress after that, pushing on recklessly through the maintenance tunnel. How long did the damn thing go on for? Abruptly, they broke through the cables and wiring and came to a short length of clear hallway that ended in another door that was partially open, maybe three feet off the floor, stuck. Jennifer went first, getting down and moving through the opening after doing a quick survey. When nothing happened, Jack and Jenkins followed. They'd reached another maintenance bay scattered with greasy tools and spare parts and a few shredded corpses. Once they'd secured the three ways in and made sure nothing was in there with them, Jack sat down heavily in the nearest chair and carefully unzipped his uniform.

The claws had missed the zipper at least.

"Damn, that looks bad," Jennifer murmured as she grabbed the Stimpack off her belt and opened it up. Jenkins stood watch while she worked.

"This is gonna hurt," she said.

"Just do it," Jack grunted.

He clenched his jaw and let out a pained half-yell as she poured antiseptic and clotting liquids across the wound. It was, mercifully, mixed in with a numbing agent that quickly went to work. Jennifer worked quickly and skillfully, cleaning the wounds and then sealing them with military grade bandages that were supposed to stand up to a lot of punishment. Once she'd sealed them up, he thanked her and re-zipped his uniform.

"How's it feel?" she asked.

"Fine for now," he replied. "It'll have to do. Damn, we really need to find some armor."

They located another service lift and this time Jennifer volunteered to go up first. Jack and Jenkins waited in tense silence as the elevator went up the shaft, paused, then came back down. It came back empty. They stepped onboard and rode it up. Jack wondered what they might find in the Containment Area. It could mean anything. What was it containing? The lift stopped and the door opened, revealing Jennifer with the shotgun.

A pair of dead Imps lay at her feet.

"What the hell?" Jack whispered, stepping out, pistol drawn.

"What the hell indeed," Jennifer replied. "I have no idea what to make of this."

Jack felt an awful chill rip through him as he looked around the broad, open space they'd been admitted to. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of some strange, greenish brick, the surfaces chipped and worn. He realized that he'd seen it before...in his nightmares. That same green brick. There were four pillars in the room, big, rounded brown pillars of some unknown stone material. Flickering torches set into black metal holders provided some of the light, while the racked florescents up above provided some as well.

He could see three ways out of the room, and all three of them were gleaming silver doors that looked utterly out of place.

"What _is_ this?" he muttered. "Where did this come from?"

It was becoming a recurring question. Knowing that they couldn't linger, Jack started moving. They checked the doors, finding the ones that led to the left and right were shut and wouldn't open. The final door, dead ahead, slid up on command to admit them to a large storage area. It looked more human, with gritty, bloodstained deckplates and smooth white walls, several of which were open, their panels taken away, raw circuitry and technology, the guts of Deimos Base, exposed and often sparking. There were haphazard piles of crates everywhere, creating a confusing network of alcoves. Imps were somewhere nearby.

Well, at least the light was steady.

They began moving into the crate maze. The crates were of all different sizes, shaped into squares and rectangles. The whole area was infested with Imps. Their progress felt slow and sloppy as they made their way through the confusion of crates. Jack ended up emptying his pistol twice over, putting rounds in Imp skulls, punching holes in their chests, and then finding more ammunition. Jennifer was hell on wheels with the shotgun, vaporizing whole Imp heads with the squeeze of a trigger. Ten minutes later, they'd traded a lot of shells and bullets for about a dozen and a half dead Imps and a few zombies, just to mix things up.

Jack had almost given up hope of finding more ammo, but while they were searching the natural alcoves created between the uneven stacks of crates, they found what seemed to be someone's stash. Jack found grim thoughts drifting through his mind as he inventoried the supplies. It was in a dead-ended alcove buried pretty deep in the crate maze. Who had this belonged to? Where were they now? How had they survived the initial slaughter?

There was at least another shotgun, a box of shells and some magazines for the pistol. Jack ended up taking the shotgun and fully loading it, then passing off the rest to Jennifer. His sidearm situation was little better. The pistol was loaded with one in reserve, and that was it. They headed out of the storage area, finding only one door among the five in the area that actually led onwards. They came into a long hallway that stretched away from them to the left and right. Much like before, this corridor provided a brand new curiosity.

The walls were paneled in weathered wood and rusty nails. Flicking torches provided light. A few of the wood panels had fallen away and beneath them, they could see the wired and piping guts of the installation. At the right end of the corridor, they saw a large silver door stamped with the UAC logo that looked important. Towards the left, Jack squinted, staring down the lengthy wooden passageway. There was definitely something down there, but he couldn't make it out. He motioned towards it, then set off.

"What is that?" Jenkins murmured, cold fear stealing into his voice.

It was a pedestal of some kind, Jack realized as he drew closer, maybe three feet tall. It seemed to be made of rusty copper. It also drew his gaze to the floor, which he realized was not wood, but made of some strange kind of stone that made him think of sandstone. There was something red on the rounded top of the pedestal.

It was a human heart, Jack realized as he drew within a few feet of the thing.

It was still pumping. He could even heard it, faintly.

"What the fuck?" he whispered. "What... _how_ is this?"

"It's not right," Jenkins whispered.

"No. It's not." Jennifer punctuated her sentence with a gunshot that made Jack jump. The heart burst, spraying blood across the wooden wall behind it. Somewhere, distantly, Jack thought he heard a roar. Maybe it was his imagination. They turned away from the awful pedestal and began walking down the long, strange corridor. The few doors they came across were either locked down tight or wedged shut, and there wasn't a keycard or cutting torch in sight. Before long, they came to the huge silver door at the end of the passageway.

Jack expected it to be locked, as it looked pretty heavy-duty, like it was guarding something important, but it wasn't. It slid right up into the ceiling, revealing what appeared to be some kind of combination control room/observation deck. Monitors surrounded them, as workstations lined the walls beneath the ring of glass that made up the center of the outer three walls. Most of the screens were broken from gunshots, several were showing static, some were actively bleeding. Jack watched the impossible situation for several seconds as blood popped straight out of the glass and ran down it, pooling somewhere below on the metal floor.

They were back in regular human territory again, though, so that was something.

Jack walked to the front of the room and found himself looking down into a large, open, metallic arena-like area. It was littered with corpses. He saw human, Imp and Demon bodies down there, as well as a great deal of blood.

"What the hell was this area?" he muttered.

"I think this terminal still works," Jennifer said.

He turned away from the window and saw her settling in at a mostly intact looking terminal. Jenkins stood by the door, standing guard. Jack moved over to join her. He watched as she silently navigated the menus on the computer through a haze of rolling static and a large crack through the screen. Several minutes passed by in tense silence. Occasionally, Jack could hear something bang into a metal wall or floor somewhere, or something let out a roar, or a deep growl. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, moving his hand slowly up and down. He was working on a headache. The boost he'd gotten earlier felt like it was losing its grip. And they were just on the second building. How much more of this crap was there?

He knew not to try and have a set idea on when something bad was going to end, because he'd learned the hard way that how much you could do, how much you thought you could endure or put up with, was all perception. It was true that there was a hard limit, a hard end, to how much a human being could do before passing out from exhaustion or going crazy, but a lot of people didn't understand or never learned that it was actually way more than they thought they could endure. It was miserable, and awful, and hellish…

But you could do it.

He could do it. He had to do it.

He'd made a mistake when he'd told himself that it'd all be over in the Phobos Anomaly, and he was trying to tell himself that it wouldn't do to count on it being over when they hit the Hangar. It might go on longer than that.

"Aw hell," Jennifer muttered.

He came back to the here and now. "What?" he asked.

"I'm reasonably sure that they were running tests on these things. I found a schedule of 'battle tests', though it's pretty vague as to what they were testing, but it's got to be the creatures. So they obviously didn't _just_ find out about these damned things..." she sighed. "The good news is that I've found a map of the Containment Area. And there's an armory on the other side of the structure. The most direct route that I can see, and honestly our only route right now, given the state of the other areas we've come across, is down there, through the arena. We can access a maintenance route and cut through a lot of the crap."

"Of course," Jack muttered. "Well, sooner the better."

Jennifer stood and hefted her shotgun. "Couldn't agree more. Now we just have to find a way to get down there."

"There's a hatch," Jenkins said, pointing.

They followed his finger and saw a hatch tucked away in one corner, between some of the workstations.

"Good eye," Jack said, moving over to it.

He crouched by it and opened it up, then found himself staring down a narrow shaft. Nothing was moving around down there at the bottom, as far as he could tell. With a sigh, he made his way down the ladder, hurrying to the bottom. Once he was there, he hopped off and spun around, shotgun at ready. He found himself in a small, reinforced room. It was empty. The others came down and they left through the only door, which admitted them out into the arena. Now that they were on the ground floor, Jack realized that the area was ringed by doors, all of them closed. He remembered that the maintenance bay they were looking for was dead across from the observation deck.

They started making their way towards it.

Their boots echoed hollowly as they crossed the huge room, occasionally squelching as they stepped in a thick pool of blood. Jack froze in his tracks as, suddenly, all around them, every single door (save for the one they needed to go through) opened up. A general chorus of roars and growls and shrieks sounded as a dozen Demons and Imps poured into the room from the small, simple rooms they'd been caged in previously. Jack snapped out a curse, raised his shotgun and pounded out a shell, hitting a Demon right in its big, ugly, vast maw. The shot was good: the back of the thing's head blew out, spraying the others with dark red gore.

Jennifer and Jenkins opened fire, shouting as they strafed away from each other as not to get in each others' ways. Jack adjusted his aim and fired again, ripping away half of an Imp's skull with a slug shell. It had been in the midst of throwing a fireball and the blast threw its aim off. The fireball meant for Jack flew into a Demon's back. The big pink thing roared and spun around. There were a pair of Imps nearby and apparently that was good enough for it. The Demon began stomping towards them, roaring furiously.

Apparently, Imps were good at reading Demon body language, because they immediately issued hisses and began tossing out fireballs at it before it got to them. Jack issued a short, high-pitched laugh that stank of hysteria and turned his attention to the other things that were trying to kill them. He sprayed the air with blood as he put down another pair of Imps and a Demon. He ended up expending the meager shotgun ammo he'd scraped together recently doing so, but as he pulled out his pistol, he saw that Jennifer and Jenkins had finished off the others.

Well, almost all of them.

The Demon and one of the Imps were still going at it with fang and claw. Jennifer raised her shotgun, but Jack put his hand on the barrel, lowering it. The three of them watched silently as the two monsters ripped and tore at each other. In the end, the Demon won out. It hit the Imp with one of its muscular, though strangely small, arms and knocked the thing to the floor. The Imp, badly beaten and bloody, tried to get up, but the Demon planted one foot on its chest, leaned down, grabbed an arm and ripped it off in a spray of blood.

The Imp died shortly after.

Jennifer rewarded the victor with a shotgun blast to the back of the head, putting the big ugly pink thing down.

All became still and silent.

"This place is messing with us," Jack said as they stalked across the arena.

"Yeah, I've noticed that," Jennifer muttered. "It almost feels like we're being watched..."

"I know what you mean," Jenkins said. "All those damned doors opened at once, like a trap, like they were waiting for us."

"None of those things are smart enough to lay traps," Jennifer said.

"What then?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Something we haven't seen yet. Or maybe those two big assholes we killed back on Phobos? More like them?"

"They seemed more like muscle than brains," Jack murmured.

They reached the door and opened it up, tensing for another attack, but there was just a derelict maintenance area. The trio progressed quickly through the filthy, oily bay. They located another lift that they took down into the guts of the base. Their trip through it, this time, was thankfully short and uneventful.

"How you holding up, Jenkins?" Jack asked as they passed through some well-lit, relatively-untouched looking tunnels.

"I'm okay," he replied. "Gut hurts like hell, but I'll be fine. I just...can't believe all this shit. I mean...this is crazy, right? Like, this is all as crazy as I think it is, right? I'm not losing it or anything, am I?"

"No, it's nuts," Jack replied. "Totally off-the-wall bonkers."

"Well, at least the good news is that the Drill Sergeants weren't bullshitting us," Jennifer said. "Apparently, this training really does make you ready for anything. I think we've handled it all pretty well."

"That is a good point," Jack murmured. "How'd you two fair in boot?" he asked.

"Like crap," Jennifer replied. "Sexism, unwanted advances on me. Had to kick ass on three separate occasions when one of my 'fellow' Marines wouldn't take no for an answer. Broke one guy's nose, another idiot's arm, almost cracked the third moron's skull. Other than that, I did pretty well. I mean, I think so, at least."

"I kind of just...pushed through," Jenkins said. "It all kind of blurs together. I mean, before it all..." he hesitated.

"Before it all?" Jack prompted.

"I was a real screw-up," he said. "You remember that flu that hit the Midwest back in '39?"

"Yeah. That was, uh...R1X9, I think," Jack replied.

"They called it the Black Fever," Jennifer said.

"Yeah. My whole family ended up getting it. We lived in some pretty crappy housing. I got it, too, but my immune system fought it off. Almost didn't though. But my whole family died. My brother, little sister and parents. I was fifteen. My uncle took me in but he was a drunk mechanic who was never around. I was always getting into trouble. Drinking, drugs, girls, all the cliched stuff. Got arrested several times, almost got myself killed more than once. When I was nineteen, I finally landed in the hospital after a stupid car accident. I decided I needed to get my shit together after I almost died, so I signed up for the Marines."

"It seemed to have worked," Jack said.

He shrugged. "I dunno, not really. I'm here because of a dumbass mistake."

"You're a good Marine, Jenkins," Jack replied. "You can fight, you can shoot, you can keep your head in the midst of genuine chaos. That's not easy. You survived. You earned that. You're a good Marine," he said firmly.

"Thanks," Jenkins said quietly after a moment.

They reached the end of the tunnels and rode another lift up, then climbed another ladder. The place they emerged in was even worse than the damned arena. Jack led the way out and into a huge, warehouse-sized room. The walls to either side were nothing but ranked square steel cages. There were dozens of them, perhaps a hundred on either side. Most of them were open and empty, some had bloody interiors, but some still held Imps and Demons. One held a Cacodemon. How long had this been going on? he wondered sickly.

The next room was actually worse.

They passed through a ripped-open, reinforced airlock and came into a surgical bay. Several surgical bays, actually, divided by glass partitions. Several of the surgical tables held Imps and zombies that had been cut open. Their stomachs and chest cavities lay open and exposed to the world around them. Medical tools glittered and gleamed in the too-bright operating bay lights. The trio moved silently through the place that stank of blood, death and antiseptics. Jack felt his stomach turn over lazily, his last meal threatening to come up. He'd never liked hospitals and needles made him very nervous, but this…

It was like a vision of hell itself.

They moved quickly through the surgical area, keeping clear of the tables and carved up bodies. As he passed by the last table before hitting the far exit, the zombie corpse on it suddenly shifted and moaned. Jack jerked back in surprise, although he was five feet away, (his lack of armor was really freaking him out). He felt his stomach twitch again and his bile rise as the thing rolled over towards him. Foamy loops of intestine spilled out, dangling over the side of the table and splattering wetly to the floor.

"God," he whispered.

Rousing himself, he forced himself to walk out of the room. The others followed silently behind him. They passed through another ripped open airlock room, then moved through a small office complex, and finally came out the other side into another long corridor. This one seemed like it was in the process of a huge renovation. Several of the big metal floor panels had been ripped up, revealing a crawlspace beneath. The walls were a strange patchwork of bland gunmetal gray panels stamped with the UAC logo and a bizarre blackish metal that oozed a strange dark substance. They moved cautiously down the passageway.

"There," Jennifer said quietly. "Door to the armory."

They moved quickly over to it and promptly discovered that it was locked. Jack growled and kicked the frame as a sudden burst of fury overtook him. "God _damnit!_ " he snapped. "Can't we get a single fucking break!?"

"Jack...calm down," Jennifer said.

He glanced at them, saw the worry in their eyes. Jeez, he was starting to lose it. Bad time, bad place to do it. He sighed deeply and tried to clear his head. "Sorry," he muttered, looking around for some way to get through this roadblock.

"There," he said, pointing, as his eyes fell on an open floor panel about ten feet away. "Maybe we can get through under the floor."

"Exactly what I was hoping to do today when I crawled out of bed," Jenkins said miserably.

Jack went first, leading the way over to the floor panel. He grabbed his pistol and flicked on the flashlight, then pointed it down the dark maw. A steel-silver environment, wrought with smears of blood, that strange oily black ooze, and circuitry and machinery, the guts of the base, was revealed. He moved slowly around it, searching the shadowy darkness as much as he could, but his flashlight revealed nothing.

With the trepidation of a man preparing to jump into a very cold swimming pool, Jack hopped down into the niche. He fell just two feet and grunted, then quickly dropped to his hands and knees. He took another minute to scope out the area, but there were a lot of partitions and pieces of equipment that blocked his field of view.

"We're clear...for now," he said.

Jennifer and Jenkins followed him in. They began to navigate the space beneath the floor with a quiet desperation. Jack felt his heart kicking hard in his chest. He was hot, sweating badly, feeling claustrophobia ensnaring him, closing in on him the way darkness closes in on your vision when you're in the process of passing out. Controlling his breathing to the best of his ability, he tried to hold it together.

They moved parallel to the wall and finally found an opening that led beneath it and into the armory beyond. Not much farther now. The quiet grunts and breathing of the others were incredibly reassuring. Jack came around another piece of machinery beneath the floor and saw light up ahead. It was coming from another open panel. Oh thank G-

Jack screamed as a red, clawed hand shot out from behind the machinery and wrapped around his wrist. An Imp shrieked and yanked him violently forward. The pistol discharged, briefly painting the whole area in a stark black and white flare. He saw the mask of alien horror that was its face, the eyes, the huge mouth that was like a black hole ringed with teeth. He could hear the others trying to get to him, but this was his problem.

Struggling violently, Jack punched the thing in the face.

It was like punching a brick wall.

Acting on instinct, he shot his hand out, his first two fingers held rigid and formed into a very primitive stabbing implement.

They penetrated the thing's eye, which vanished into an awful, hot oozing mess that splattered all over his hand and wrist as if he'd burst a boil. The beast began shrieking furiously and it let go of his hand. Jack brought the pistol up, stuck the barrel into its mouth and squeezed the trigger three times. The thing's head came apart like a ripe fruit and it stopped shrieking.

"Ugh, God," he muttered, wiping his hand off on his uniform.

"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked.

"I'm fine," he replied. "Just grossed out. Imp," he explained.

He heard her sigh in relief. Once his hand was cleaned, he crawled on and made it up and out of the crawlspace. He secured the area while the others joined him. They'd definitely come up into the armory, and it was, as promised, a big one. It was a large, rectangular room the walls of which were covered with ranked rows of shelves, cases, gun and armor lockers, and workbenches for basic weapon and armor maintenance.

They spent twenty minutes picking through the entire area, as it was obvious that, like all the other armories they had encountered so far, it had been picked over. First, he imagined, by the humans that had run this place, and later by the zombies, or perhaps the Imps looking to arm the zombies. They didn't seem capable of such tasks. Well, maybe. The Z-Secs definitely did, though. In the end, wading through all the awful stuff turned out to be really, really worth it. Jack began to feel something like hope again.

They found three suits of Combat Armor.

Jack wasn't sure why they were bright blue in color, but they were and it didn't matter because they were _tough_. They could stop a point blank shotgun blast. They were airtight and came with a pretty healthy supply of oxygen. They could hold a shitload of ammo and grenades and whatever else you wanted to take with you. They found the suits in a small storage room attached to the back that was largely untouched.

They were each in a glass case, looking clean, glossy and pristine.

They ran quick checks on the suits after getting them on, as they came with a basic operating system to monitor the oxygen supply, suit integrity, a reticule on the Head's Up Display keyed to whatever gun you were holding, (provided it was compatible, which all of the DX models were,) and basic vital signs.

The suits were great.

On top of that, they manage to scrounge up several more magazines of ammunition for the pistol, a couple of boxes worth of shotgun shells, a Raptor SMG with some bullets for Jenkins and, lo and behold, another big, shiny, silver chaingun that Jack claimed for himself. It even came fully loaded and with an extra magazine.

After they finished cleaning out the armory, the three of them quickly tracked down a tram station that would take them to the next building: the Refinery.

Jack was feeling pretty good about his odds as they rode the tram once more.


	25. EPISODE 01: Into Darkness

Jack didn't want to leave the tram.

Mainly because this time, as they rolled into the new station, he could see an ugly green glow waiting for them. The platform itself was clear, but once glance down beyond it into the maintenance area below was enough to inform him that there had been a massive toxic waste spill. There had to be six feet of the stuff pooled down there.

"Thank God we found these suits," Jennifer murmured as she joined him in looking.

Jack sat there for a long moment, staring out the Plexiglass windows of the tram, not wanting to move. Neither of the other two said anything, clearly not eager to get back out there. He didn't blame them, he was right there with them. After another few seconds, Jack forced himself to stand up, because if he didn't, he'd just keep sitting there and this would be as far as they made it. Part of him wanted to give up so desperately, wanted to just stay in the safety of the tram and never leave and wait for someone else to come along.

But he knew the chances of that were somewhere between infinitesimal and forget it. When you were a Marine, or really, if you wanted to be successful in life, you don't wait for things to happen, you _make_ them happen.

You do it yourself.

He hefted his shotgun and made his way back out of the cockpit, down half the length of the first tram cart until he came to stand at the sliding glass-and-steel doors. He raised his arm and pressed the button. His limbs felt wooden. He was tired again, a bone-deep exhaustion that was beginning to permeate through his whole being. Trying to shake it off, Jack stepped out onto the platform. It was at least steady.

The trio progressed silently across the metal deckplates. They hit the far door without incident and Jack could feel tension mounting on the air like an invisible, odorless gas. When he opened the door that granted them entrance into the refinery, he knew why he felt this. The way beyond was pitch black. Sighing heavily, he activated the flashlight at the end of his shotgun barrel and pointed it into the way beyond.

The reception lobby looked like a tornado had ripped through, after an earthquake had hit, but he hadn't expected any different.

"Do the lights really have to be dead?" Jenkins groaned.

"Apparently," Jack replied as he moved into the next room. He played his light slowly across the walls, hunting for enemies, but that strange, vague combat sense that kept him alive told him that there wasn't anything around. He spent a few minutes confirming it anyway, his flashlight revealing broken, bloodied furniture, a scattering of spent shell casings and dead bodies laid out in the gloom. Finally, his light fell on a non-digital map of the wall. Thank God to whoever thought that up. Technology was a huge crutch nowadays.

All it took was one good EMP, one good blowout, and a whole base could be plunged into chaos. Plus, in a place like outer space where there was no atmosphere and it was damn near absolute zero, it could mean death.

"Okay," Jack said slowly as he studied the map. "If we can get doors open, we should be able to cut a fairly straight path through the Refinery and get out the other side to the next tram. All we really have to contend with is the darkness."

"Yeah, just the darkness," Jenkins muttered morosely, looking around.

"We'll be fine," Jack said, but he wasn't so sure.

He'd never liked the dark but he'd made himself get over it. But here, where actual, genuine monsters lurked…

Well, it was a bad place to be.

"Let's get it over with," Jack said, holding his shotgun closely. He moved over to the door that would take them deeper into the Refinery. It was open, which was nice since it meant they wouldn't have to deal with the manual release. Jack hated screwing with those things. He pointed the barrel of his shotgun at the dark opening, revealing an antechamber with several more doors. He stepped inside, clearing the room with a sweeping arc of his weapon. Still nothing, although in the stark silence he thought he could hear something shift, distantly.

Apprehension crept coldly along his skin as he crossed the room, his fingers aching from clenching the shotgun so hard. He just wanted this to be over, but he knew it was a vain hope, a distant prospect at best. If it was going to be over, and not in a nasty, brutal kind of way, it was still a ways off. How many more buildings did they have to traverse? Too many, it felt like. Far too many. In a way, it felt like he would never stop making his way from building to building, plunging into the hellish horror time and time again, fighting infinite monsters.

Jack shook himself and crossed the antechamber, stepping through the next door, which was a split down the middle kind of door and only partially open, leaving maybe a foot and a half of clearance. Just barely enough for them to squeeze through. He stepped through and then-

-Something grabbed him, something _strong_ , and yanked him forward. He cried out, shoving blindly, off center. He slipped from its grasp and stumbled, then spun around, raising the shotgun, trying to see whatever it was. Definitely no zombie. He spied an uncertain figure lurching towards him, something broad…

A Spectre!

He fired, letting the thing have it point-blank. Blood sprayed seemingly from nowhere. Then a second shotgun barked and the thing let out a furious roar and collapsed to the floor, still almost totally invisible. His heart was jackhammering in his chest and it felt like it might burst through the combat armor. Jack made himself calm down and scanned the hallway he'd come into. It was hard to tell, but the way seemed clear.

"You okay?" Jennifer asked.

"Close enough for rock and roll," he replied. He was sweating inside the suit now. Frustrated, he turned up the A/C a notch and set off, determined to get through this one way or another. Their boots clanged hollowly in the hallway as they stalked on. They passed lots of closed doors that no doubt led to offices and storage bays and maintenance areas. Thankfully they were pretty much exclusively closed and not easily opened, at least for a monster. So that kept them from who knew how many dangerous gun battles.

They reached the end of the hallway and reached their first obstacle. The door ahead was closed. Jack sighed and spent a few minutes hunting along the door's frame for the manual release. When he found it and hit it, the door popped open and he crouched down, grabbed the bottom and began grunting with effort as he pulled it upwards. His suit provided him some extra strength and he finally managed to get it open.

They came to another huge antechamber, this one leading into the Refinery proper. They would have to enter it and cut right down the middle, through all the equipment and machinery. Almost as soon as he was in, a fireball lit up the gloom and slapped right into his chest. Jack grunted, regained his footing, staggered forward, shoulder his shotgun and blew the damned Imp's head right off. More fireballs appeared to the right and to the left he began to see the flashes of muzzle flare. Cursing, Jack began to work on the Imps as he strafed, trying to get the two groups to get into a crossfire. He heard Jennifer and Jenkins join in.

The antechamber was ablaze with gunfire and fireballs that crisscrossed every which way. Jack felt a few of the shots connect against his back and was enormously grateful for the badass blue armor. He beheaded another Imp, cocked the shotgun, took aim again and blasted another's arm off. He kept blasting away, kept moving, dodging fireballs. One of the Imps shrieked and leaped at him. Its face appeared in his sights and he blew it off, spraying the others with blood. He saw that there was only one Imp left now and put a fist-sized hole in its chest, sending it flying backwards into the wall behind it where it slid to the floor, leaving a huge smear of deep red blood as it went. Jack turned around and surveyed the situation.

A few of the zombies, Z-Sec variety, were still alive and fighting. He emptied his shotgun in helping the other two put them down. As the last one fell, Jack hastily began reloading his shotgun. Silently, he walked over to the large silver door and approached the control panel beside it. He frowned at the dead screen, the realization that this door was not opening slowly dawning on him. They didn't have manual releases, not doors this size, or if they did, he had no hope of finding it and operating it. Well...shit.

"Dammit," he muttered, hunting for another map. He soon found one tucked away in a back corner and studied it. As he figured out a new plan, the other two approached him. "What'd you find among the dead?" he asked.

"Slim pickings," Jennifer replied, passing him only a single magazine of ammo for his pistol. "Same as usual."

"Well, looks like we're going to have to deal with the generators anyway. One of them, at least," Jack said.

"How's that?" Jenkins asked, sounding nervous, fidgeting in the stark gloom.

"This door isn't opening without power. And while there are other routes we could take, it would honestly be easier to just go turn on the lights. We just have to backtrack, cut through this storage bay, get down a few halls and then head underground. There's a hatch that should take us right to one of the auxiliary generators. If it's fixable, we'll fix it and restore power to the immediate area. Then we get through the door and be on our way," Jack explained.

"Great," Jenkins muttered.

"Know what you mean," Jack replied. "Let's get to it."

They retraced their steps, heading back into the large hallway they'd initially traversed. As they did, Jack realized there was light, and then immediately wished their wasn't. Lost Souls, about half a dozen of them, floated aimlessly, investigating the shootout, no doubt. Two of them nearby let out hissing shrieks as they spotted the trio and began zooming straight for them. Feeling a spike of cold fear pierce his guts, Jack raised his shotgun and blew one of them away. Jennifer did the same thing and both flying skulls disappeared in plumes of flames and a rain of bleached bone. Naturally, this drew the attention of the others.

The three of them managed to blast away the Lost Souls before they got close enough to pose a real threat, and then they blew away the three more of them that drifted out along the length of the corridor. Once the threat was dealt with, Jack led them ever onwards, finding the correct door and coming to the storage bay they were looking for. The bay smelled weird, he realized as he stepped inside.

It wasn't death. Well, the smell of death and blood and spilled guts was common, omnipresent across the two moon bases. No, this had the strange, thick, ropy aroma of rotting vegetative matter, of a compost heap. It was cloying. Jack played his light across the wall to the right and hesitated. "What the hell is that?" he whispered.

The other two lights joined his and focused on the same thing he was seeing. In between a pair of huge crates was a section of wall, slate gray in color. But it was covered in what seemed to be thick green vines that twisted and writhed as they were dreaming.

"Could they be...from a greenhouse?" Jack asked uncertainly.

"They don't look natural," Jennifer murmured softly.

She was right. Although they looked kind of like creeper vines, they were covered in small white thorns, like miniature versions of the ivory protrusions that the Imps sported. After a long moment, Jack determined that he had no idea what the heck they were and simply vowed to keep away from them, then kept going.

They made their way quickly through the storage bay and only had to put down a few Imps and Lost Souls before they hit the generator room. Jack lowered himself into the room beneath the deckplates and checked out the auxiliary generator. It was in working order and all he had to do was activate it. Why hadn't it been turned on? Whatever, it didn't matter. The lights in the room flickered weakly to life.

This light was better than not light, at least.

Jack climbed back up.

"Well, halfway there," he said.

"Hopefully," Jennifer replied.

She had a point. But they didn't run into any real trouble on the way back to the door. Just a few zombies that had wandered out of their hiding places. He was worried that they'd have to track down keycards to open the thing up, but when he pressed the button on the control pad, the door began to slide up into the ceiling.

"Well, that was easy," Jenkins muttered.

"Yeah," Jack replied slowly, worry creeping up into him, icy and menacing.

The door continued to rise. The area beyond was still dark. Not exactly the best sign. When the door reached chest height, Jack couldn't stand it anymore. He ducked down and pointed his barrel-mounted flashlight into the stygian abyss beyond. He saw huge refining tanks, larges rectangular pieces of machinery spread out across a broad open floor, several bodies...the light came to rest on something. For a second, he didn't know what he was seeing.

Then he raised the light a little bit and lit up the face of another one of those tall horrors with the goat horns. Red energy crackled in its eyes as it opened its mouth and loosed a roar that froze him where he stood.

A name for the thing snapped into his head on the heels of the paralyzing fear: Baron of Hell. He was looking at a Baron of Hell.

Jack screamed and fired off a shotgun shell. It glanced off the thing's shoulder and though a spray of blood escaped the wound, it didn't seem to do any real damage. The thing raised its hand and hurled a green ball of fire at him.

"Fall back!" he roared, blasting away with his shotgun.

The other two opened fire as well. Jack emptied his shotgun a second time and was reaching for more shells, (the last of his shells now), when his elbow bumped the chaingun he had hanging across his back. Trembling in fear, he dropped the shotgun and brought the chaingun out, swinging it around from behind him. He did it so hard and fast that he threw himself off balance and stumbled to his right. It saved his ass.

The giant goat demon had just lobbed a green fireball at him which would have taken his head off. As it was, it narrowly avoided him, scorching right past his helmet. He regained his footing, aimed the big, six-barreled beast at the Baron and squeezed the trigger. The barrels spun up and then began spitting out red hot metal death. It hit the thing right in its broad, carved-from-granite chest. Blood and chunks of gore spewed as the thing roared and flailed. He ended up going through the entire magazine putting the monster down.

"Holy shit, I thought there were only the two of them," Jennifer whispered shakily.

"I guess...I guess there's gonna be more of them," Jenkins said.

"We should name them. I think we should call them Barons of Hell," Jack said. He was trying to reload the chaingun with its final box of ammo, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the corpse he'd just created.

"That's a really good name," Jennifer replied.

Jack didn't say anything, finally managing to get the box slotted. He made himself let the thing hang back in its original position, then retrieved his shotgun. Wordlessly, he led the way into the refinery beyond. He moved with great trepidation, they all did, but they managed to reach the other side and locate the tram without seeing a single other hostile. Jack felt a tremendous relief as he slid into the cockpit and fired the thing up.

But as he looked up into that fiery red sky, and looked down to the surface where he saw more Lost Souls and Cacodemons than ever, and now even the distant shapes of Imps, Demons and zombies marching across the surface, he couldn't help but feel that his luck wouldn't last forever, that they were living on borrowed time.


	26. EPISODE 01: Raw Meat & Dark Corridors

Something that Jack had come to learn was that some sayings were true. Very true. Not all of them, but some of them. And one that he firmly believed in was: it's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better...if it ever does get any better. Nowhere in his entire career, in his entire _life_ , had that idea been so thoroughly highlighted. They'd made it across the surface yet again, although each time they crossed, it felt like more and more of a lethal gambit. There seemed to be more monsters out there every trip.

The tram rolled into its station and they hauled themselves out onto the platform. Now they were in Deimos Labs.

As soon as they stepped into the wrecked, high-security entrance lobby, all hell cut loose. Jack grunted as he was kicked in the chest by a shotgun blast. Not point-blank at least, but enough to send him stumbling and to no doubt leave a big bruise across his ribcage. He heard gunfire behind him, the patter of Jenkins's SMG, and caught sight of a Z-Sec going down under a metal rain. Then it was all bloody, bullet-riddled chaos.

Jenkins and Jennifer were far back enough that all they had to do for cover was to step back a few feet and crouch down in either side of the big chrome doorframe. Jack had no such option. He was out in the open, the only option he had was to dash forward, into the gunfire, and dive to safety inside of the big circular desk that dominated the center of the room. It immediately fell under fire as the small army of Z-Sec zombies that were pouring into the room opened up. Jack managed to pop up and get a lucky shot off.

He blew half of one's head away in a spray of sparks and gore. It dropped and flopped on the deckplates like a fish out of water, turning Jack's stomach. Humans didn't do that. He could hear the other two earning their keep, blasting away at any exposed black-armored assholes. He took whatever opportunities presented themselves and ended up depleting his shotgun in the process. After a nearly five minute shootout, the last Z-Sec fell and all became silent. Jack waited, his body tensed, seeing if anything else would show up.

But nothing did.

He let out his breath, relieved and trembling from the adrenaline. Slowly, he stood up and surveyed the area. It looked worse than before, somehow. Silently, the trio began picking through the remains, scrounging among the corpses they'd just produced, hoping against hope for more ammo. Jack tried to think of nothing at all as he searched the dead. The exhaustion he'd been feeling since not long after they'd left the Deimos Anomaly was only getting worse. After all they'd been through on Phobos, and now this…

He was seriously beginning to question if he could handle it, if he might not end up snapping somehow. He told himself that he was a Marine, goddamnit, tried to tell himself to suck it up, get over it, get moving. But it wasn't just the physical labor. It wasn't just the endless trekking or the shooting or all the other oddjob physical tasks that came up. It wasn't even the blood and the bodies and the signs of damage here, there and everywhere.

It was the base itself.

Somehow, someway, the creatures were...subverting it. Changing it. _Corrupting_ it. That was probably the best word for it. It was like the buildings had gotten cancer or something. It was screwing with him and he was paranoid that it was just going to get worse, they were just going to see even more screwed up crap.

"We got a map of this place?" Jack asked after they finished up. No luck with his shotgun, it was spent, but he'd managed to find himself another SMG finally, with some ammo to boot. Jennifer approached him, holding what looked like a PDA.

"We got lucky," she replied. "Map of the Labs. Gimme a minute to figure out the shortest route through."

"Excellent," Jack said and began moving around the room again, seeing if there was anything he'd missed. As he did, he tried to covertly study the others. As bad as he was doing, he wondered how they were holding up. All three of them needed to keep their shit together. From what he could see, Jennifer looked the most sturdy. He had an idea that she was probably the strongest of the three of them when it came to sheer willpower. Jenkins was doing better than Jack thought he would, but he was still the most worrying of the three of them.

Of course, Jack wasn't all that good when it came to judging his own mental competence.

The kid had been shot and he didn't like the sort of glazed look in his eyes or the sluggishness he sometimes moved with. But he was mostly holding up his own, and Jack meant what he said: Jenkins was a good Marine.

But even a fantastic Marine made mistakes, especially in a situation like this.

"Okay, I've got something," Jennifer said, rousing him from his ruminations.

He moved back over to join her and studied the map. Deimos Labs looked fairly complex, though it had the same basic layout as Phobos Labs, with the central core and four wings extending away from it, each ending in a large, circular structure. The path she outlined basically indicated that they could enter the central area, curve around its outer portion, then come out through the other side into the tram station.

Jack prayed that it was that simple.

"Well, the sooner we get out of this nightmare, the better. This place is really starting to freak me out," he said, heading off towards the main entrance to the labs at the front of the room. If only he knew how darkly prophetic his words were.

He opened the big chromed door and came up short. A foul green mist hung on the air and he could smell the acrid stench of spilled toxic waste. Sure enough there was a lot of it in view. Dead ahead of him, maybe five feet away, a creek of the stuff cut horizontally across his field of view, effectively denying them access to the way beyond. But even worse than that, beyond the creek of green sludge, which was perhaps five feet across, he saw a strip of land...then another one, and another strip of deck-plating, and _another_ one after that!

"Well, hell," Jack muttered. "Don't suppose there's another way around?"

"No, not realistically, not unless we want to go outside," Jennifer replied.

Whatever dangers might be here weren't nearly so bad as what was outside. So Jack heaved a world-weary sigh. "Fine, we'll jump over this crap. Even if we don't make it, these suits should stand up to this stuff. For a little bit, at least."

"Great," Jenkins muttered.

"I'll go first," Jack said.

They gave him some room and he backed up several steps. Then he took a running jump and leaped over it. He landed with a hard, booming thud on the other side, his boots slamming into the deckplates. He also landed perfectly in position to alert an Imp that had been hiding out of sight, off to the right in a darkened alcove. The thing cut loose with a shriek and leaped at him. Jack yelled as he was thrown backwards.

He felt his shotgun slip off his shoulder and just knew it had gone into the green muck. No time for that now. The Imp was bearing down on him. Jack yanked his pistol loose and opened fire, punching holes in its chest and spraying its blood across the area. He aimed up and fired once more, turning its right eye into a plume of dark gore. As it slumped to the floor, Jack heard more hissing and a roar from somewhere nearby, somewhere too close for comfort.

"Come on!" Jack called to the others as he scrambled to his feet. He glanced back and could just make out the uncertain figure of his shotgun lying in the toxic waste, smoking. Yep, it was gone. Damn. He'd liked that gun.

Holstering his pistol, he grabbed his SMG and prepared to rock n' roll.

As Jennifer and Jenkins minded the gap, Jack looked ahead, SMG in hand. He saw Imps and Z-Secs coming out of the woodwork, apparently the place was littered with shadowy niches and perfect places to hide. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired. The bullets went in, the blood came out. Once Jennifer and Jenkins were safely on the platform with him, they joined in the firefight. Jack sent out controlled bursts of red hot lead, going for the head as often as he could. Between the three of them they ended up dropping eight Imps and half a dozen Z-Secs, as well as a pair of regular zombies that had wandered into the fray.

Jack slapped a fresh magazine into the Raptor and cleared the area.

"Okay, let's do this again," Jack said. "This time with less assholes," he muttered to himself.

He took a running jump and made it across the second spill. As he prepared to make the third jump, he hesitated. Something seemed wrong. He stopped and looked around, studying his environment intently. When his instincts were telling him that something was wrong, it paid to sit up and take notice.

"What's wrong?" Jennifer asked after they made the jump behind him.

"I don't know," he said softly. "Something _is_ wrong, but I don't know what."

He walked up to the edge of the third and final toxic creek and looked left, then right. Suddenly, he had it. The spill continued a ways away before turning out of sight. This passageway they were making their down via jumps was originally a broad corridor. But the walls over the spills had been broken away.

"What did this?" he asked finally, then explained what he saw. "I mean, this isn't simple damage. This is...beyond that."

"The base is continuing to change," Jennifer murmured.

"What's changing it?" Jenkins asked.

"They are," Jack said softly.

"What? The freaking demon things? The Imps? The zombies? How?"

"No, I think it's...something more. Some kind of...force," Jack replied.

"Force? Some kind of force? What does that even _mean?_ " Jenkins asked, sounding more nervous than ever.

"I don't know," Jack said, rousing himself. "Only that this situation has even wider implications than I thought. But it doesn't matter right now. Come on."

He was freaking himself out, and by extension the others. Bad time and place for it. He jumped over into the next and final section. They'd come to the end of the hallway, the walls of which were done up in a mixture of slate gray octagonal patterns and computer screens that were displaying almost totally random data. Several showed static, others showed the UAC logo, others showed random strings of numbers and letters, others bled, and some just said TEI TENGA...whatever the hell _that_ meant. Jack moved slowly forward, coming up to the next door. He opened it and found himself looking at a fresh visage of horror.

"What the..." he trailed off.

This was definitely becoming too much.

The area beyond was bathed in an impossible red light. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and it was overwhelming. And yet they could see everything with an almost unnatural clarity. Which sucked, because Jack really would have been fine without seeing what he was seeing. Hung from the ceiling on chains and hooks were limbs. Arms and legs, some bare, some with uniforms still wrapped around them.

They all dripped blood.

"This is messed up," Jenkins whispered.

"This is beyond messed up," Jennifer replied softly.

"Come on, we have to keep going," Jack said, heading off.

"But...Jack-" Jenkins began.

"Just don't think about it," Jack replied.

Silently, the pair of them followed him. Blood splattered across his armor and ran down his visor. He did his best to ignore it, trying not to think about the atrocities committed here, the horrors hanging just a foot overhead. This was deliberate, just like the dozens of personnel crucified back in the Phobos Anomaly. What had driven them to do this? What did they want? Where did they come from? Dozens of questions tore through his head and he didn't have answers to any of them. And any theories he came up with only distressed him.

So he kept them to himself.

He was so busy trying to stay focused that he almost didn't notice a slight change in decorum. The same gray paneling covered the walls, (bathed in red light), only now, repeated over and over, were strangely stylized engravings of a Baron of Hell's face, placed seemingly at random. They gave him bad vibes and he could almost feel all the eyes watching him. Jack shuddered and tried to shake the ominous feelings. He was only somewhat successful. Finally, they reached the end of this particular horror show in the form of a partially open doorway.

Jack peered through the crack in the middle. He spied a transitional area beyond, but nothing alive at least. Jennifer helped him force it open and they headed through. Dead ahead was the way they needed to go.

"Oh, come _on!_ " Jack groaned.

It was locked down. They needed a blue keycard to get through it.

"Maybe we can find an alternate route," Jenkins suggested.

"We could but..." Jennifer frowned, clearly considering something and not liking it. "It'd probably be dangerous, though it'd probably be dangerous either way. But what's really getting me is that...Phobos Labs had their own comms system. Deimos Labs surely should, too. Maybe we should check it out? See if we can get _someone_ on the air? Mars City? Other survivors? It'd be good to hear from someone else..."

"You have a point," Jack murmured. He sighed. "Okay, let's see if we can find this blue keycard," he said, looking around.

There was a little security kiosk tucked away in a nearby corner, little more than a booth a guard could sit in and monitor the situation from. Jack entered through the side door and quickly checked it over for supplies. No luck there, someone, or something, had already been through. But one of the screens was still functional, so he booted it up and got to work. The main system of Deimos Base was even more fried than Phobos's was, but at least this time it worked with instead of against him. He didn't need to screw around with clearances.

He found the keycard tracker and located the blue keycard. He also found a yellow keycard. Although they weren't near each other, he had Jennifer mark both of them on her map. "Might as well get them both," he said.

Jennifer nodded in agreement. They left the kiosk and began making their way towards the blue keycard first. It was down the bottom right wing of Deimos Labs, near the back. Jack found his mind wandering as they started making their way through more mercifully 'normal' portions of UAC architecture, which at this point meant steel corridors sprayed with old blood and tattooed with bullet-holes, and deckplates carpeted with shell casings.

He found himself thinking of Jennifer again.

What kind of life could they have together? Or what kind of life could they have had? Despite how grim he'd been most of his life, Jack thought of himself as an ambitions man. He didn't really settle. He couldn't. But the last year had really taken it out of him. Could he have settled for pulling guard duty on Mars as a damned Space Marine, working for a company that put a bad taste in his mouth whenever he saw their logo?

Well...maybe he could have, if he had Jennifer with him.

He almost hated himself for thinking it, because it sounded so cliché, and also so pathetic. How many men and women, good, smart, strong people, had he seen settle down in a relationship? A good relationship or even a bad one, and give up ambition? How many had he seen resigned to marriage? How many could clearly do better, either with another person or even by themselves? He'd been contemptuous of them in his past, then bitter, then depressed.

But now?

Now he felt kind of...sympathetic. He kind of got it. There was only so much fight in a human. How long before you had it kicked out of you? Life was a grim, miserable, brutish existence. It was painful, lonely and depressing.

And it became surprisingly tolerable when you had a significant other.

Jack knew it was crap, it was just your body tricking you into thinking that you were happy with empty chemical promises. And when it was gone, white-hot, passionate love tended to fizzle into passive acceptance and security, and by then you'd forgotten how to be single, and you remembered the horror of loneliness, the soul-crushing torment of isolation, and you looked at your partner and thought to yourself:

 _Better than being lonely._

Jack at least tried to console himself with the fact that he was at least sure he wouldn't be settling when it came to Jennifer Taylor. One of his abilities that he'd had for a long time, something that was ingrained in him, was the ability to read people, and read them well. He could just...tell about people. And he could tell that Jennifer was every bit as strong, smart and competent as she appeared. Probably more so, actually.

He realized that his biggest concern with committing to her was being worthy of her, of making sure that she didn't feel like she was settling.

As they came to another door and opened it up, Jack's train of thought derailed. No, more than that. It didn't just derail, it jumped the tracks, flipped end over end into a nearby canyon and exploded into a million thought fragments.

"I'm not going in there," Jenkins said.

Jack didn't blame him, not one bit.

The corridor beyond continued as it should...except that it didn't look anything _like_ it should. Huge portions of the walls, floor and ceiling had been replaced with...with flesh. Pulsing, squirming, bleeding flesh. Jack felt his stomach roll over lazily, his last meal threatening to come up. "We have to go in there," he said finally.

"Can't we go around?" Jenkins moaned.

"There's no other way around," Jennifer murmured.

"Fuck..."

Jack led by example and took the first tentative step in. The floor squished horribly beneath his boot and he almost fell back. But no, he had to do this. Just like before, with the hanging garden of bloody limbs, just one foot in front of the other, keep going, don't think about it, stay focused. Jack looked around as he walked into the room, unable to keep his eyes from sliding over everything. Possibly the worst part was the fact that he could still see obvious signs of he UAC facility that had once been.

Like islands among a sea of horror, Jack spied a few sparking workstations, some panels of the original wall and floor, and a few light fixtures that flickered weakly overhead. "It's somewhere in here," he whispered.

Whispering seemed appropriate.

"Let's split up and find it," Jennifer replied.

He nodded and headed deeper, while Jennifer broke left and Jenkins made for the right side. Everything else that had come before this, at least when it came to the strange changes made to the base itself, to the architecture, seemed to pale in comparison. They were walking on a floor made of _flesh_. Blood was dripping occasionally from the ceiling. How was this even _possible_!? The whole world had gone insane.

As he hunted for the blue keycard, Jack suddenly found himself wondering if _he'd_ gone insane. The situation was so crazy, so far beyond the pale of normal, and he was so isolated, surrounded by nothing but chaos and hellish horror, that it almost seemed _likely_ that he'd snapped. Maybe he was in a coma? Or an asylum? Would that actually be better? He didn't even know. He thought that it wouldn't, ultimately.

Losing your mind was probably scarier than this.

Well, maybe.

"I've got it," Jenkins said, though he didn't sound too happy about it.

Jack turned and hastily retreated, wanting to be out of this room very badly. He and Jennifer converged on Jenkins, who looked like he was sorting through something. When they finally came to stand behind him, Jack realized why he wasn't too happy about having found it. The blue keycard was buried beneath a tangle of spilled guts. He finally fished it out and twitched his wrist a few times, trying to get the blood and gore off. Wordlessly, he passed it to Jack, who accepted and pocketed it. "Let's get the hell out of here."

They hurried back the way they'd come, gratefully leaving the awful flesh-room behind. Thankfully, they didn't run into any more of the malignant entities that haunted the forsaken starbase. As soon as they were back at the main door, Jack swiped the keycard and opened it up. The door revealed...a darkened section. Of course. Reigning in his fear and frustration, Jack activated the flashlight on his SMG and peered into the gloom beyond. Another large antechamber awaited them, with a huge silver door dead ahead and two open doorways, one to either side, that led to the circular corridor that ringed the inner portion of Deimos Labs.

"Shit," Jack muttered as he walked inside. "Doesn't matter what keycard we have, we aren't getting into the core without power to this section."

"So we've gotta find another generator," Jenkins muttered.

"No, I don't think so. The areas around us have power, I think we'll have to make some basic repairs," Jennifer replied.

"Any idea how to figure out where and what repairs?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, I just have to find a working terminal," Jennifer answered.

They decided to break left, because it had better lighting. Although they could see some Demons stomping around far along the corridor, accompanied by a trio of Lost Souls hovering thither and yon. The Demons would bat at them ineffectually whenever they drifted close enough. In a way that made him feel like his sanity was slipping a notch, Jack thought that it was almost cute. He raised his SMG and opened fire, turning the three Lost Souls into bone fragments. They managed to put down the three pink Demons before the things got close enough to do some damage. Jack slapped a fresh magazine into his Raptor.

Just in time, because suddenly there was a huge, red Cacodemon floating around the corner at the end of the hall. It's huge eye flashed madly and it opened its vast, gaping maw of a mouth. A blue-yellow ball of fire shot out. He tried to sidestep but misjudged it and the ball smacked him in the shoulder with enough power to spin him and throw him to the floor. He grunted as he landed on his ass and heard the others opening fire. Reduced to a single magazine for the SMG, Jack remained sitting, aimed and fired careful volleys of shots, accompanying the others as they tried to put the giant beach-ball thing down.

It popped off another four shots before it, itself, popped and sprayed the area with its gory red innards, then smacked wetly to the deckplates.

"You okay?" Jennifer asked, helping him up.

"Uh-huh," Jack replied, looking at his shoulder best he could. The blue armor was singed with soot now, blackened a bit, and he'd have another bruise and a sore shoulder for a week at least, but he was otherwise unharmed.

"Those things are so weird," Jenkins muttered. "I mean, it looks like they're...grinning, you know what I mean?"

"I do," Jack replied. "They're creepy as hell."

"Nowhere near as bad as the Lost Souls," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, those things are freaky," Jack agreed.

They spied an intact terminal up ahead, near the curve in the corridor where the Cacodemon had appeared from. The trio hurried over to it, and Jack and Jenkins secured the area while Jennifer worked the terminal. After a bit, she had it.

"Okay, two bits of good news...well, I good-ish news. I was right, we need to make repairs. I can make them. Unfortunately, they're in a crawlspace beneath the floor. Fortunately, it's nearby. On top of that, we do need the yellow keycard to get into the core area. It's hidden away in the upper left wing," she explained.

"Well...I guess we should make the repairs first," Jack said.

She nodded. "I'll need some cover down there."

"I'll go with you," Jack said. "Jenkins, you'll stay up here and provide overwatch."

"Got it," he replied.

She led them to the nearest access panel, which was back a little ways, towards the main room they'd first come into. Once she found it, she crouched, hit the manual release and pulled it open. They pointed their flashlights down into the hole. A world of close confines and gritty industrial tech awaited them. They couldn't see any hostiles down there. Jack dropped into the hole, crouching and quickly checking out the area around him.

"Clear," he said, then made way for Jennifer, who dropped down.

"This way," she said, leading him further back towards the original room. Their trek was made slowly, painfully, made all the worse by the damned suits of armor. He loved them in all other respects, but in tight places? It made movement nearly impossible. Seconds bled into minutes, but finally they hunted down the thing they needed to repair.

"Looks like a stray bullet got down here," Jennifer murmured as she pried open a sparking panel. She pulled a toolkit off the wall and cracked it open, then began to fuss at the interior. Jack looked around, keeping watch. There were just two ways into this compartment: the way they'd come, and an opening ahead. He crouch-walked over to the second entrance, making sure that they were secure. Listening to her work, Jack approached the entrance. He couldn't see anything out of place, couldn't hear anything else.

A Lost Soul suddenly appeared from the right, dancing silently into the flashlight's beam. It issued a shriek and began to beeline for him.

" _OH FUCK ME!_ " Jack screamed as he scrambled backwards and squeezed the trigger. Bullets sprayed everywhere, one of them hitting the skull and knocking it off course. He heard Jennifer shout something but was too blinded by his own terror as he stared death in the face. The thing ended up sailing up into the deckplates overhead. It bumped into them, then reoriented itself, faced Jack and began to come straight down for him.

Abruptly, it burst into bits and pieces. He snapped his gaze over and saw Jennifer holding a smoking shotgun.

"Thanks," he whispered, trembling all over from terror and adrenaline.

"No problem," she replied, sounding just as dazed.

"You okay down there!?" Jenkins called. Both of them jerked in surprise.

"Just fine!" Jack called back. "Almost done!"

It took another five minutes, but Jennifer finally closed the panel and Jenkins called down to them that the lights were back on. They crawled back out of the dark hole and emerged back in the central corridor, then began making their way down it, towards the yellow keycard. Just one more thing to do, one more thing on the list, one more goddamned task. One in a long, long chain that was surely only going to get longer before all this was over. Jack trudged along, taking point, pistol in hand now since he was down to half a magazine for his SMG and he'd lost his damned shotgun. He missed that shotgun.

The chromed tunnel curved around, slowly revealing more of itself, more devastation, more blood. Jack wondered if there was anywhere untouched on this whole damned moon. It seemed as if the...the incident, for want of a better word, had reached into every corner, every nook and cranny, every room and every corridor.

Was anyone else left alive on Deimos?

As they found the way into the wing they needed, several strange things became apparent. The first was that most of the walls in the area had been bashed down or otherwise removed, the result of this being that they could see practically the whole wing from where they stood at its head. The second thing was that there were huge, gaping holes in the walls and ceiling, letting in a lurid red light. The third and final, (and possibly the strangest), thing was that, at the very far end of the wing, some three hundred meters away, Jack could just make out what appeared to be a section of the ceiling slowly lowering and then raising, like a giant crusher.

"Well...I guess that answers that question," Jennifer muttered.

"What question?" Jack replied. He glanced over and saw that she was tapping at a small control pad on her wrist.

"This room is obviously atmospherically compromised. I just sampled the air. It's breathable. So...wherever we are has a breathable atmosphere. Obviously it's not Mars out there."

"Then where in the hell are we?" Jenkins asked miserably.

"I don't know. I get the feeling maybe we'd be better off not knowing. Come on, the keycard is at the other end," Jack said, setting off.

As they began heading into the enormous room, it was like some kind of unseen, unheard alarm had been tripped. Monsters started coming out of the woodwork, appearing from behind piles of rubble and workstations and small mountains of crates. Lost Souls and some Cacodemons drifted in through the holes in the ceiling.

Jack just groaned, raised his pistol and set to work.

In the end, it took them a solid twenty minutes to clear the way. They shot, they dodged, ducked and ran. They took cover, gained ground and retreated. They blasted their way through a small army of zombies, (few of them Z-Sec), a couple of dozen Imps and Demons, and a flotilla of Lost Souls and Cacodemons. As he blasted away, finding more ammo for his SMG and using it all up, and ultimately being forced to take out a huge chunk of the enemy forces with every last round in his chaingun, Jack found himself extremely grateful that they hadn't run into another Baron of Hell. Or some other new horror.

Were there more types?

Of course there were, there had to be.

What all of this resulted in, ultimately, was the three of them standing at the crusher. It was, in fact, a giant crushing thing. It was a huge stone block, rising and lowering slowly with a machine precision. When it came down, it did so about an inch short of the base, which was a raised section of the deckplates. There was a lot of blood and gristle on that base. Obviously several things, (were those Imps, or zombies on there?), had gotten stuck under there, somehow. And, of course, the yellow keycard rested in the middle.

Before anyone could open up debate about who would do it, Jack took a step onto the base as soon as the great stone block began to rise and there was enough room.

"Jack-" Jennifer began, then fell silent, figuring he needed to concentrate. But honestly, he didn't. It was slow moving enough that he snagged the card and stepped back out right about the time it hit the top and was beginning to come back down.

"What in the hell is the point of this?" he asked, staring at it. "Where did it come from? Who the hell put it here?! _Why_ is it here?!" Neither Jennifer nor Jenkins seemed to know how to respond. Jack realized that he was getting a lot angrier than he had any reason to be and forced himself to cool it. "Whatever, let's just go."

They'd apparently cleared out the hostile forces in the immediate area, having to only put down a handful of roaming zombies and Imps, which was good, because Jack had expended all ammo save for his sidearm, and he just had four magazines to his name for that. Jenkins was in about the same position, and Jennifer was running low for ammo on her shotgun. They made it back to the central door, unlocked it and found themselves heading up a tight spiral staircase, the walls of which were covered in those same green vines that rustled and stirred disturbingly every now and then. A control center waited for them at the top.

"Damn," Jack muttered, staring at the destruction. It looked like an army of Imps had been through, ripping everything asunder and brutally murdering anyone around. The windows were broken out, the consoles, workstations and terminals throughly trashed, those that weren't dead were periodically bleeding sparks, and floor was a mess of blood, corpses and spent shell casings. Jack found himself staring out over the vast desolation of Deimos Base, which, he realized just then, in a dazed kind of way, was also built into a crater. Overhead and all around, he could see that same strange red haze, like blood in zero gee.

In the far distance, he thought he could see the vast, dark shapes of a mountain range, but he couldn't be sure.

"Well, the comms for Deimos Labs are down for sure," Jennifer said.

"How can you tell?" he asked, turning around. She was also at the windows, on the other side. He moved to join her.

She pointed. "That's the transmission tower," she replied.

It was trashed, little more than metal debris spread out across the red-gray, ashen surface of the moon. It glinted dully in the strange, ambient light. Some Lost Souls drifted by over the former transmission site.

"Great," he muttered. In the distance, he could see the shapes of the last three places they had left to go: Command Control, the Nuclear Plant and the Hangar. "Well, this was a waste of time," he muttered. Slowly, he turned away from the window and surveyed the room one more time. Everything was utterly destroyed.

There was nothing more here for them.

"Let's get over to Command Control and see if the view is any better from there," he said, heading for the spiral staircase.

The others followed him silently.


	27. EPISODE 01: Beyond Control

Like they had over a dozen times before, they rolled into their next destination.

Command Control over on Deimos looked in even worse condition than it had back on Phobos. Jack, Jennifer and Jenkins stepped silently out of the tram after it had settled into its nest and put down a half dozen Imps and zombies hanging around on the platform. It started out weird almost right away, as Jack led the way deeper into the structure. He stepped into what was supposed to be the main entrance lobby.

It didn't look anything like what'd he'd seen so far.

Rotted, pale wood surrounded them. There was a wall dead ahead, maybe twenty feet, that had a window about ten feet up. He could see Demons stomping around beyond the blood-smeared window. What was supposed to be the lobby split to the left and right. He could hear Imps and zombies around somewhere nearby.

"Let's get to work," he muttered.

They went to work and spent the next ten minutes blasting their way through the immediate area. Jack, Jennifer and Jenkins put holes in a dozen zombies and a quartet of Imps. They made their way deeper into the maze of strange pale woodwork. Sometimes, through holes in it, he could see steel and bare circuitry, proof that the original installation still existed somewhere under there. Jack burned through three magazines for his pistol and as he reloaded the very last magazine, a shot whizzed by his head and he turned around.

They'd made it past the lobby area and had come into a storage bay. The walls had shifted from odd pale wood to a strange slate gray marble. Z-Sec assholes were pouring into the room from three different entrances.

"Open fire!" Jack called as he dove towards the corpse of a Space Marine behind a trio of crates. He quickly patted the corpse down and almost let out a shout of joy when he found a pair of magazines for his SMG. He holstered his pistol, then quickly reloaded the SMG and pocketed the remaining magazine. He could hear Jennifer and Jenkins blasting away at the small army of Z-Sec. As soon as he was ready to rock n' roll, Jack popped up, feeling full of piss and vinegar, and sprayed a quartet of dark-armored assholes down with red hot lead. He sprayed their coagulated blood across a stack of crates and they fell to the deckplates.

He grunted as a pair of bullets pinged off his armor, both hitting him in the chestplate, and he turned and finished out the magazine, shattering the visors of two roaring, pistol-wielding Z-Secs. Another round winged his armor and he spun, let the SMG drop and whipped his pistol back out. He aimed and fired, putting four rounds through the chest of another Z-Sec, then fired two rounds into the head of a regular zombie that had wandered into the fray. Only this one was wielding a shotgun and had fired off some shells.

The two rounds tore away a good portion of its skull and brain.

He finished out the magazine putting down the rest of them and hastily reloaded, but no more shots were fired. An uncomfortable silence fell across the area.

"Clear?" he called.

"Clear," Jennifer confirmed as she and Jenkins came out.

"Secure the area," he said.

They headed out, moving through the storage bay. The first thing Jack did was to claim that shotgun he'd seen. He grabbed it and found it empty. Cursing briefly, he slung it over his shoulder and kept searching. In the end, he managed to snag another pair of magazines for his SMG and nothing else. Not even a spare mag for his pistol.

Well, it was better than nothing, he supposed.

They left the storage bay by way of a large door made of that same pale wood. It slid up into the wall just like the regular doors did and as he watched it disappear into its niche, a powerful sense of unreality and dislocation settled over him. Jack tried to shake it off, no time to be in a daze. It was weird how the littlest things got to him. Zombies, fire-throwing monsters, corridors made of flesh, crimson skies, oh yeah, he could apparently handle that. But a door made of wood acting like a door made of metal?

No way, that's where he drew the line.

The thought almost made him giggle hysterically, but he bit down on his tongue, making himself cling grimly to professionalism and rigid military discipline. He'd seen guys lose it before on the battlefield. At one point, when he was fighting a nasty turf war over in Estonia, one of his squadmates had just started laughing, right in the middle of a firefight. Jack saw that he was laughing at a small white rabbit that was hopping through the blood-soaked, body-strewn nameless field they were fighting in. Just hopping, like nothing was wrong.

The guy had gone right on laughing until suddenly his head was blown clean off.

Jack himself had almost started laughing, but that spray of hot blood nailed back to reality in a very powerful way. And it had saved his life that day. So here and now, he made himself get nailed back to reality, or else he was going to become a corpse. The storage bay led out into a large, circular corridor similar to the one back at Deimos Labs. They walked along it for a bit and finally found a way into the dark heart of the structure.

Unfortunately, they couldn't actually get inside.

"Shit," Jennifer muttered as she studied the lockout that had been placed on the door. "What is it with this place and lockdowns? This is ridiculous."

"What do we have to do?" Jenkins groaned.

"We gotta find a handprint, a PDA and a red keycard," she replied.

"Holy God..." Jack moaned miserably. "Do we have _any_ idea where _any_ of those are?"

"Well...I can at least find the keycard. It's off to the left a ways, in a mess hall. As for the PDA...ugh, I'm going to need to get to a security center and then override the PDA tracking system and see if it's even still intact. As for the hand...hell, Staff Sergeant Hall could've ended up anywhere. I'll have to think about that one," she replied.

"Great," Jack muttered. "Well, let's at least get the keycard. Then figure the rest of this crap out," he added.

Jennifer took the lead.

The jaunt to the mess hall wasn't too particularly difficult. They put down a handful of zombies and a few inattentive Imps. When they actually got to the mess hall, though, they got into a brief but brutal firefight with some more Z-Secs. Jack wondered what they were doing hanging around this place. They hadn't seen many of the dark-armored jerks until just recently. Jack managed to retrieve about as much ammo as he expended.

Nothing new there.

They found the red keycard discarded back in the kitchen area, tossed inside of an empty cast-iron pot in a lonely, forgotten corner. After pocketing the thing and making progress towards the nearest security station, he found himself wondering just how in the hell it had ended up there. When disaster struck and chaos reigned, stuff wound up in the weirdest locations. He'd seen it happen before and the mind couldn't help but try and come up with some kind of scenario to explain the situation. The brain was a funny mechanism.

They hunted down a derelict security center five minutes later and he watched Jennifer work. As she stared into the screen and her fingers worked the keyboard, he felt an unexpected wave of...well, lust wasn't really the right word. Lust was some of it, he was horny for her in that strange way that combat brought forth all the baser emotions, but he also admired her. She was smart, she was brave, she was dedicated.

He realized, at that point, that there really wasn't any question. If and when they got out of there, he intended to be with her in every way possible for as long as possible. That was, of course, provided she still found him a tolerable partner.

"Got it," Jennifer said suddenly. "Okay, the good news is that we can do this. The bad news is that it's going to be a bit of a pain. I found the PDA, it's in the command staff's living quarters. I also discovered that the scientists here had put into effect a sort of DNA tracking system. It's experimental, but it should work. Basically, it plugs in through the LifeScan network. We can access it through the medical complex on the other side of the building."

"Hooray, let's trek around this place some more," Jack muttered.

"Hey, we aren't getting paid by hour," Jenkins replied.

"I _wish_ we were getting hazard pay for this shit," Jennifer said as she grabbed her shotgun and headed out of the infirmary.

Jack and Jenkins followed her, echoing the sentiment. They plunged back into the main circular corridor that ran around the core of Command Control. Jack felt like a clockwork man, trudging along, running mostly on autopilot. He was beyond exhaustion at this point, almost like when you were so cold that eventually, you no longer felt the cold because they no longer felt _anything_. You were numb. He felt numb to a lot of stuff happening around him. As an Imp leaped out of an open doorway and he blew its head off, he idly wondered if he was losing his mind. It didn't seem like it, but then, wasn't that how it often was?

One of the whole points of losing your mind was that _you_ thought you were fine, while everyone else realized that you'd gone off your damned rocker. Well, he had two other fine examples of Marines here to keep him in check...although they might be just as crazy as he was. Phobos and Deimos had been a nonstop horror show almost from the first moment he'd set foot on the surface of Phobos. Again he was struck by the idea that this might just be an extended hallucination. He blew away another half dozen Imps and three zombies with the others' help, and they killed their way to the command staff dormitories section.

It didn't take too long to track down the PDA. Thankfully, it was only a little bloody, the screen only a little cracked, and it fired up on the first try. It even had most of its power bar full. Jack tucked it away in a reinforced pocket of his suit of combat armor and they moved on to the third and final leg of their journey. Well, _this_ small journey anyway. Not even the last journey in this structure, let alone this moon.

As they made their way towards the medical complex, Jack's mind kept wanting to drift towards 'after'. What would happen _after_ this? After they got into the core of Command Control? After they moved onto the next building? After they got to the Hangar? After, God willing, they got off of this moon and away from...from wherever the hell they currently were? But he kept forcing the questions back down now because there was nothing but speculation. When the world was as uncertain and terrifying as this, you really were only able to have one larger, broader goal, and then you had to deal with everything else as it came to you.

Right now that goal was: Get to the Hangar.

Everything else was just a string of haphazard objectives.

They killed another batch of Demons and Imps, who ended up getting pissed at each other halfway through and turned on each other. Jennifer had rewarded the lone survivor, a swaying, one-armed Imp, with a shotgun blast to the face. They kept moving through the ruined, bloodied chromium environment until they came to the medical complex. As they made their way through the reception area and came into one of the larger emergency rooms, Jack froze. So did the others. The first thing that hit him was the stench.

It was beyond awful.

It was so bad that, without really thinking about it, he closed his vents and turned on the internal oxygen supply.

There were about a dozen examination tables in the room, along the walls, but something like fifteen or so more mobile tables had been brought in. All of them were occupied by bodies. They were naked, and they had all been cut into in one form or another. Several of them were limbless, a few, (the lucky ones, he thought), were headless. Several had been cut open from crotch to chin, skin neatly flayed open and, as if in contrast to the surgical precision, the flaps of skin had been bolted crudely to the top of the table.

Some of them were still moving.

"God," Jack whispered.

"We have to...end it, for them," Jennifer murmured softly.

Jack felt his stomach turn over, ice fill his veins, but he knew she was right. There was no way to save them from this. No way but a bullet.

"Do it," he said grimly.

They moved out, among the dead and the dying.

Feeling like a reaper, Jack found the first of those still alive, a man who'd had his eyes cut out and most of the skin along his right arm flayed off. He placed the gun against the man's head and squeezed the trigger. As he moved on, he heard the others doing the same thing. He came across a woman who'd had her intestines pulled out through a cut in her stomach. They were hung from hooks overhead. She was moaning continually and it seemed as if she'd bitten through her lips in several places. Her eyes were vacant and cloudy.

He shot her in the head.

In the end, there were eight still alive, and somehow, not one of them was screaming. They didn't even seem to recognize that the end was being delivered. They seemed insane, beyond pain, beyond recognizing anything around them. It was, Jack thought, a mercy. But he couldn't help but think of the torture, the agony, they'd had to endure in order to break them in such a way. With an effort, Jack forced the thoughts from his mind as they finished crossing the hellish horror of the infirmary. They moved down a short corridor and came at last to main control room. It was considerably less bloody and horrifying.

"Give me a minute," Jennifer said quietly as she settled in to work at the main workstation. Jack looked around the room. It seemed like a glorified office, the walls to either side of him stuffed with technology, the main workstation itself at the back. He and Jenkins stood guard by the door, as it was the only way in.

Jack hesitated as he saw something unfamiliar on his HUD. He studied it and realized, with a start, that it was a countdown timer for his oxygen supply. It was still high, almost full, but he hadn't even realized he'd turned it on. Not that he really blamed himself. He quietly opened his vents and shut it off. After another minute or so, Jennifer stood up.

"Okay, I found him. Staff Sergeant Hall isn't too far from here. He ended up in an auxiliary generator room," she said.

"Wait, can you use the scanners to determine if anyone else is alive?" Jack asked.

She shook her head. "No, I don't have access to that, but we should be able to from the control room," she replied.

He nodded. All the more reason to get the job done fast. They three of them trekked on, pressing back through the slaughterhouse. Jack did his best not to look at any of them, not to focus on the fact that these were all people, all human beings, who had once had dreams and hopes and loves, and now they were just so many objects in a cold, bloodied infirmary on Deimos. As he stepped back out into the main hallway, his focus shifted forcefully as a fireball smacked him in the chest. Swept with a sudden inexplicable but powerful, potent rage, Jack spun, raised his shotgun and aimed at the Imp that had attacked him.

Only no, it wasn't inexplicable, it was perfect explicable.

He was furious at this inhuman monsters, these demons, for what they had done. For the horrors they had visited upon him, upon his friends and allies, upon good men and women. He couldn't squeeze the trigger, he just couldn't.

Because he wanted to kill this fucker with his bare hands.

Letting out a scream of white hot fury, he dropped his shotgun and raced forward, covering the distance in a bare few seconds. The Imp seemed confused by the sudden change in tactics. It had been winding up to throw another fireball but he crashed into it like he was tackling another player at football practice. The two of them went tumbling to the rusty, blood-stained deckplates and the Imp issued a hissing shriek.

It was the last sound the thing ever made.

Jack felt like his vision was going red, like his brain was on fire and something inside of him was screaming. He grabbed the thing's huge, misshapen head and began pulling. His natural strength, amplified greatly by the suit of combat armor, was enough to decapitate the thing, though messily. It bucked and jerked beneath him, but he kept going, hearing a horrible ripping sound, followed by a wet snap that had to be its spine, and suddenly he fell backwards, the thing's head in its grasp. He looked up and saw another two coming towards him.

Screaming again, he threw the head at one of them. Blood splattered the pair of Imps as the head struck one squarely in the chest. Before he could go at these with his bare hands, they went down under a pair of well-placed shots. Jack jerked around, ready to keep fighting, but there was only Jennifer and Jenkins, who were staring at him with a concerned, fearful horror.

"Jack…what the hell was that?!" Jennifer cried.

He tried to say something, but his throat had locked up. He closed his eyes and fell to his knees, trying to get control of himself. He reached up, groping blindly at his helmet, and managed to get it off just in time before he puked. He narrowly avoided someone's boots, he wasn't sure who had gotten to him first, all he could see was the floor and a stream of dark, murky liquids escaping his mouth. The stomach acid burned up his throat and into his nostrils and as he finished throwing up, he coughed raggedly, groaning.

He _hated_ puking.

After dry-heaving for a bit longer and spitting several times, he finally crawled over to the nearest wall and sat with his back against it. Through some small miracle, nothing else had shown up while he was having his miserable little breakdown.

"Shit," he whispered, taking off his pack and rummaging around in it until he came up with one of the canteens. He drained most of it, then replaced it.

"Are you okay?" Jennifer asked quietly. She stood in front of him now. Jenkins stood a little further down the corridor, facing away from them. Now that his brain wasn't on fire anymore, Jack felt a slow horror creeping over him.

"I..." He wasn't sure what to say. How do you explain that? How do you explain that you just ripped something's head off and try to claim that you aren't losing it? "I don't know," he said finally, not looking at her, staring at a spot between his feet. There were several drops of blood there, across the chromium deckplates.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked. She sounded worried. He didn't like that. He was worried enough for the both of them.

"I think so," he said. He cleared his throat, turned, hawked and spat a few times. Damn, he hated the taste of stomach acid. "Yeah, I'll be okay," he said, finding some certainty. "I'm sorry," he added, grabbing his helmet and pulling it back on. As he got up, he went to retrieve his shotgun, and tried to articulate himself.

"All those people," he said, now looking at her. "I just...I flipped out. I was seeing red. I _hated_ that Imp, it was like...it had done it, all that stuff in there, all the stuff we've been through, all these dead people. Someone needed to pay," he explained quietly.

"I understand," Jennifer said finally.

"If it helps, that makes sense to me," Jenkins said. He was facing them now. He looked pale and vaguely embarrassed.

"I guess it does," Jack replied awkwardly. He reloaded his shotgun. "Let's, uh...let's keep going. I've wasted enough time as it is."

Jennifer gave him an appraising stare, probably trying to judge whether or not he really was back in control. Finally, she gave him the barest of nods, seemingly satisfied, and set off. He followed after her, trying to stop from trembling. He didn't know if the shakes came from adrenaline or fear. He'd worked very hard to form a rigidly stratified self control over the past several years, and he thought he'd done a good job.

He noticed, unhappily, that neither of the other two had freaked out like this. Maybe they had better control than he did. Or maybe there was something else. A million things went into the psychological makeup of a human being, it could be anything. So, in the end, Jack just resolved not to flip out yet again, though it felt like a shaky resolve. They managed to get to the generator room without further incident.

At first, they were utterly stymied.

There were no bodies in the generator room, which wasn't all that big. There was blood, though. After hunting through the room, behind the machinery, in every place they could think of, Jennifer finally suggested looking _under_ the room. They found an access hatch and went back down into the darkness once more, but yet again they were stymied. There was nothing and nobody under there. Finally, as he was staring at nothing in particular, trying to figure the situation out, turning it over in his mind, he glanced up.

"Oh!" he said, feeling like an idiot.

"What?" Jennifer asked, startled.

"Above us. He's got to be above us," Jack replied, walking over to a table and standing up on it. It groaned but held his weight. The ceiling was made of panels that could be lifted up. He pushed one up and looked around inside. Sure enough, he spied a corpse over in a far corner. It took a few minutes, but they managed to get the poor bastard down.

"So...how do we get his hand off?" Jenkins asked.

"We don't have a knife..." Jack murmured. He sighed. "Step back," he said, raising his shotgun. He aimed and fired, severing the man's hand, wrist and about half his forearm with a point-blank blast. Blood sprayed and some of it beaded on his visor. Without a word, he leaned down and grabbed the severed limb.

"Can we go now?" he asked.

Jennifer nodded, again giving him that appraising look, and they set off. Ten minutes later, they'd gotten back to the main door. Jack slapped the hand across the print reader, then they scanned the PDA, then he swiped the card through.

"Open Goddamned Sesame," Jack muttered as the door finally opened up.

"Let's see if all that was worth it," Jennifer replied, leading the way.

They moved into the core of Command Control, finding a winding stairwell that curved in on itself several times as it led upwards. More of those strange green vines grew along walls that were now stonework. As they finally came into the top level of the structure, they found it wanting. Jack looked over the ruined, circular room that lorded over Deimos. It reminded him of the Labs. Only this was different, worse.

The place had been warped by whatever strange reality they now found themselves in. More vines grew over the workstations, and at seemingly random intervals there were tall, brass candle-holders, only they didn't hold candles, they held flickering green flames. There was a lot of blood, and a few severed limbs, but no bodies. Poor bastards had probably all been turned into zombies, or maybe fresh meat for the Demons.

Jennifer found a functional workstation and got to it. While she worked, Jenkins stood guard by the door and Jack moved over to the windows again. He didn't want to look out, but figured it'd be stupid not to. Lost Souls and Cacodemons roamed over the surface, no change there. Though now he could see groups of Imps and Demons, and lots of zombies, stomping across the gray-reddish surface of the moon now as well.

"Oh shit," Jennifer said. It sounded like a good 'oh shit'.

Jack hurried over to her. "What?" he asked.

"There's...other people alive," she said. "Not a lot. Three. Two of them are in good shape according to the sensors, and they're in the next building! The Nuclear Plant. The final one is...not in such good shape, and in the Hangar. The first two are mobile, the third is stationary. Also, there's a big armory not far from here, back downstairs."

"Perfect," Jack said. "What about comms?"

She sighed. "The comms here _work,_ but I can't _do_ anything with them."

"That same signal as on Phobos?" Jenkins asked.

She shook her head. "No. There's just nothing to connect to. No other signals, no frequencies, no _nothing._ It's like the rest of the freaking universe doesn't exist anymore..." She trailed off and they all must have been wondering if maybe that might not be true. Jennifer cleared her throat. "I can't get in touch with any of the survivors, either. We should get out of here, go to the Nuke Plant and link up with them. They might know more than us."

Jack nodded. "Yes, definitely."

He was beginning to feel better, almost good. The three of them quickly left the control room, made their way quickly back down the spiral staircase and tracked down the armory. It was, like all the other armories around here, raided and a mess. But it wasn't stripped clean or depleted. There were magazines for their pistols and SMGs, and shotgun shells, scattered across the deckplates. The three of them quickly began gathering it all up. They placed everything they found on a table in the center of the room.

After thoroughly scouring the area, Jack made a fantastic discovery.

"Whoa, holy shit!" Jenkins said, seeing what he'd found. "Nice!"

"Nice indeed," Jennifer agreed.

It was a DX-88 'Eliminator' Rocket Launcher. Military issue. A compact gray tube that fired a single, small rocket that packed a hell of a punch.

"I don't think it's fair that you should have a rocket launcher _and_ a chaingun," Jenkins said, eyeing the chaingun hanging across his back.

Jack figured he had a point. "Fair enough," he said, taking it off and setting it on the table. They'd found a pair of big boxes of ammo for it. "You guys wanna arm-wrestle for it?" he asked, wondering who should get it.

"I'll be fine without it," Jennifer said. "I've always been better with speed over strength. It's hard to be fast with a bigass gun like that hanging around your neck."

"Fine by me," Jenkins said, grinning broadly as he took the big gun. Jack was glad to be rid of it, in a way. It _was_ heavy. The rocket launcher was about half its weight. He even managed to find three rockets for it. He loaded it up, pocketed the two spares and hung it over his shoulder, keeping it for something big. Maybe one of those big horned bastards. The three of them spent a bit dividing up the ammo. In the end, Jack wound up with six magazines for his pistol, four for his SMG and enough shells to load up his shotgun three times over.

He was definitely feeling better. After checking over all his weapons, making sure they were loaded up, safety off, (except for the rocket launcher, no coming back from a misfire there), and selecting his SMG as his main weapon, he made for the door. The others followed him. It was time to get some backup.


	28. EPISODE 01: Meltdown

The tram came to a halt in the receiving station, but Jack thought it was a damn near thing. It was worse than ever out on the surface and there'd been Lost Souls and a few zombies actually in the tram tunnel with them. They hadn't raised the alarm, as far as Jack could tell, and the Lost Souls had just bumped harmlessly up against the glass in the rear compartment when they'd been waiting for airlock to open for them.

He wasn't sure if their luck would hold out one last time.

"Are we clear?" Jenkins asked quietly.

Jack peered cautiously around, through the glass of the driver's compartment, crouching, his movements slow. After a few moments of staring at the platform and anywhere else he could see, he finally stood up.

"Clear," he said. "But stay sharp."

Was there even a single place on this fucking moon where they could let their guard down? Jack felt like he was going to have sore muscles and stomach problems for weeks from how many hours he'd gone around, his whole body clenched from tension. That is, if he was lucky enough to survive that long.

They left the tram and swept the station. There was nothing, only the brutalized, bloody remains of the dead that hadn't been put to use by the demons. Jack felt his stomach turn over as he thought of that infirmary. He pushed the thoughts away. Needed to focus. Always needed to focus. Their sweep turned up nothing. No zombies in the shadows, no Imps in the vents, nothing. Jack didn't like it, as thrilled as he was not to have to shoot it out again.

But something seemed off.

They approached the main exit and as he got close, he hesitated again.

"Jenkins to the left, Jennifer, right," he whispered. They tensed up, picking up on the apprehension in his voice. They moved in quickly and he brought his SMG into play, crouching down behind a stack of crates. Once everyone was in place, Jennifer opened the door. Jack licked his lips, his hands trembling slightly. He didn't like that, it had been happening a lot more just lately. The door parted down the middle, sliding into its niches, slowly revealing the room beyond. Jack did not like what he saw at all.

The trembling got worse.

The receiving lobby had been replaced in totality. This wasn't just knocking down some walls or a little restructuring, this was flat out changing the building itself. A corridor that was about ten or fifteen meters long stretched away from them. It ended in a large stone door. The walls had been replaced with something...something that Jack wasn't entirely sure he was seeing. It was like his brain was trying to hide reality from him.

Then it hit him.

"Oh...oh God..." he moaned sickly.

The walls were made of pinkish flesh and bleached bone. He was looking at exposed spines of some kind. The fact that it only took him about ten seconds to recover from the horror of seeing this impossibility told Jack that either he was getting good at dealing with this kind of crap, or he was getting bad at it. And by that he thought that he might be just...repressing it, or pushing it away, and not _actually_ dealing with it.

And that could have bad side effects.

And given the number of psychotic breaks he'd had just recently, he thought that it was the second option more than the first. Whatever, he'd deal with it later. Wordlessly, he marched into the corridor of flesh and spinal columns. He heard the others following behind him. Swallowing nervously, Jack found himself wondering just how he would handle this if he hadn't had these two with him. He probably would have lost his mind.

They reached the door at the other end.

The big stone slab sat, inert and unyielding. For a moment, he was stymied. He saw no way to open it, no way for them to progress. As he took another step forward and suddenly the door began grinding open, sliding into the floor. They all jerked back in response, weapons raised, ready for anything, or so they hoped.

There didn't seem to be any apparent immediate danger, so, as the door finished lowering, he stepped forward. Sweeping the room beyond with his gaze, he found almost an arena-like room. It was about twenty meters across and roughly octagonal in shape. The walls were made of that same awful pink flesh and bleached bone, the floor made of slate gray stonework masonry, the ceiling made of the same stuff.

He could see another stone door across the way, and the only real thing of interest was a large pillar in the exact center of the room.

"What is this?" Jennifer whispered.

"Bad news," Jack muttered in reply. He took a few more cautious steps into the room. It was as if the universe was holding its breath, waiting for the bad thing to happen. As he took one more step into the room, that did it.

The bad thing happened.

The pillar in the center of the room began rapidly lowering into the floor with a grinding sound that was quickly overwhelmed by the marrow-freezing roar of pure and absolute fury issued by the Baron of Hell standing atop it.

"Shoot it! _Shoot it!_ " Jack heard himself screaming even as he aimed his SMG at the big bastard and squeezed the trigger. He moved out of their way, staffing right and hosing the behemoth down with fire even as it raised its hand and hurled a ball of green energy at them. The thing missed him by inches and even through the suit he could feel the raw heat coming off of it. He emptied his SMG, putting a ton of small holes in its broad, well-muscled chest, and Jennifer and Jenkins had landed a ton of hits as well, but it wasn't going down.

"Use your damned rocket launcher!" Jenkins shouted.

As he finished reloading, he almost, _almost_ went for it. But something told him, simply: _No._ It was not yet time. He knew they could kill these things with bullets alone, and he only had the three rockets. What if they ran into something bigger?

"Just take it down with small-arms!" Jack replied.

"Why!?" Jenkins cried as he kept blasting away with his shotgun.

"Gotta save the rockets!"

Jenkins began to say something else but the big beast threw a fireball at him and he had to tuck and roll to get away from it. Jack finished reloading and emptied the second magazine into the monster, never ceasing his movement. As he slapped a third magazine into the SMG, he saw that it was beginning to slow down, wilting under the constant rain of fire. Unfortunately, it was eating up a shitload of ammo.

In the end, it took all his SMG ammo and four shotgun shells before the thing finally issued a roar of pain and collapsed to the stonework floor. Jack hastily shoved four more shells into the shotgun, cocked it and waited, but the Baron was down for good and out of the game. He let out a long sigh of relief.

"What the hell else do you think we're going to come up against?" Jenkins asked as they regrouped on the far side of the room.

"No idea, but we were in no way expecting those assholes, right?" he replied, nodding to the Baron of Hell. "Stands to reason there might be something bigger and badder along the way. And I want rockets if that's true."

Jenkins just grunted in reply, seemingly distracted with the terrifying notion that there was something even nastier than a Baron of Hell. The other stone door opened as they approached, and Jack felt an immense relief begin to flow through him as he saw more familiar territory. A corridor of gutted technology and steel deckplates awaited his inspection. It was sparking and bloody, but it was familiar, and he'd missed it.

As they began making their way down the corridor, checking out the occasional alcove or side room that seemed to house heat sync areas and energy monitoring rooms and other sections that he couldn't even guess at, his hope spiked again when he heard gunfire. Without a word, he took off sprinting towards the sound. It was too deliberate, too controlled, to belong to any of the zombies, and he couldn't imagine any of the other beasts putting the Raptors to use. They hit the end of the corridor and opened the next door.

Pure, bloody, unmitigated chaos reigned in the huge room beyond. At a casual glance, the place seemed to be a toxic waste storage area. The walls were lined with huge silver cylinders and hostiles of all kinds were pouring in through the three other main entrances into the room. A pair of battered, burned and bloodied figures in green security armor were crouched down in the center of the room in a rounded workstation, fighting desperately to survive. Survivors! Actual, real survivors! Jack could hardly believe it.

"Friendlies, coming in!" Jack screamed over the roar of combat. "Jenkins, get over there and help them out! Jennifer, cover the left door, I'll get the right!"

They both snapped off affirmative replies and headed off. Jack moved over to right door, blasting away with his shotgun. A six-pack of Demons were stomping in, roaring their heads off, and a bloated Cacodemon was coming in behind them. Not good. He worked the pump action, blowing fist-sized holes into the big pink thing's broad bodies, spraying the others with crimson gore and sending them into a more furious frenzy. They stomped towards him, roaring. He blew away a good chunk of skull of one, then fired a slug shell directly into the gaping maw of a second, blowing open the back of its head like a ripe fruit.

He dropped two more before his shotgun ran dry and he started feeding more shells into it. He only managed to get four in before they were nearly upon him. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, and emptied the gun again, putting down the rest of the Demons. Then the Cacodemon fired a fireball into his chest. Grunting as he stumbled backwards, he wondered how much more punishment the armor could stand up to. He let the gun hang and pulled out his pistol, emptying the whole magazine into the floating horror.

The big eye in the middle burst in a spray of blood and the beast roared, then began firing blindly at random, floating around and roaring furiously. Jack slapped a fresh magazine into the pistol and emptied it as well, finally popping the big bastard and killing it. He ran over to the door and slapped the close and lock button, then turned and tried to help the others as he reloaded yet again, then holstered the pistol and hastily reloaded the shotgun. He saw that Jenkins and the other two Marines had managed to stem the tide from the front entrance. He hurried over to it and locked it down as well, then moved over to help Jennifer.

Together, they blasted away another dozen Imps that were crawling over each other to get inside. He emptied his shotgun yet again, completely running it dry, blasting Imp heads and repainting the metal walls with a fresh coat of blood. As soon as they were dead, Jennifer locked down the third and final door.

All fell silent.

It was almost painful after the roar of the guns and the screams of the dying. Jack turned and began trudging over to central workstation where the two survivors were slowly reloading their weapons. They turned to face him.

"Thanks for the save," one of them said. Her nametag identified her as **SGT. Green**. "Who are you? Not that I'm complaining," she added.

"We're all that's left of a team sent up to investigate Phobos," Jack replied. "You?"

"All that's left of Gehenna Squad...not that that must mean much to you, if you're from Mars City. Got time for a story?" she asked.

The other figure, a younger man who's nametag read **PFC Stratton** , chuckled and sat down heavily in one of the chairs, groaning.

"Definitely, I could use a breather," Jack replied.

Green opened her mouth, but froze as an intercom system crackled to life. _"Warning. Warning. Nuclear reactor core approaching critical meltdown status. Nuclear reactor core will reach final meltdown status in T minus thirty minutes."_

Jack stared at Green in disbelief, then at the others.

"You are _shitting me!_ " Jenkins cried.

"Damn," Green grunted, hefting her SMG. She kicked Stratton's boot. "Up and at'em, we're not done yet."

He groaned and got to his feet, then raised his shotgun and popped his neck.

"How do we fix this?" he asked.

Jennifer moved past him and stepped into the ringed workstation with the others. She quickly began working the controls. A minute passed in silence. "Shit," she muttered, straightening up. "Okay, we can fix this. That's the good news. The bad news is that we're going to have to work fast and split up. There's two repairs that need to be made, they're really simple though, and there's a dual-lock emergency shutdown switch that, for some stupid-ass reason, needs to be initiated simultaneously," she explained.

"What's worse," she continued, "is that the corridor leading to one of the switches has been hit by a toxic spill, so whoever goes down that one will need a radiation suit."

"Ugh, I'll do that one," Jack said. He looked at Jennifer. "Will you help me coordinate the emergency shutdown?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes. Come here you three, I'll show you where you need to go and what you need to do," she said, beckoning them over.

While they did that, Jack quickly searched the zombie corpses they'd produced. If they were going to get through the Nuclear Plant, he was going to need more ammo. By the time Jennifer finished up and sent the other three off, Jack had at least managed to find enough shells to reload his shotgun and a few more magazines for his pistol. Once he was locked and loaded, he and Jennifer reopened the right door and put down a few more zombies that had shown up, then took off running down the corridor, following its curve towards the shutdown switches.

They had a hell of a timeline working against them.

Neither spoke as they blasted their way through the corridors, moving fast, not having time to get into pitched firefights with any of the assholes they ran into. Jack still ended up using his shotgun shells blowing holes in Imp and zombies chests and at one point completely decapitating a startled Imp that he ran right into and firing at point-blank range. They managed to find the emergency radiation suit storage room in record time.

"You sure about this?" Jennifer asked. "I'm probably quicker on my feet."

"I'd rather risk me than you," he replied as he moved across the narrow room to a row of glass-fronted lockers built into the back wall. He opened one up, staring briefly at the heavy white suit with its big, green boots and red rings around the wrists. He set aside his shotgun and began pulling it on. Thank God it was big and pliable enough to go over his armor. "You're smarter and stronger than I am, it's more important that you make it," he added.

"Why do you think that?" Jennifer asked. She sounded startled and a little bewildered.

"You haven't gone primal twice," he muttered without looking at her. The thing had no helmet, but whatever, his own suit should be fine.

"Jack, that's not-"

"Don't worry about it," he said. He zipped the suit up and stood, then grabbed his pistol. He turned to face her. "Let's just get on with it."

She stared at him, and he wasn't sure he entirely liked what was in her gaze. He thought it might have been pity, but he tried to tell himself that it was empathy, which was a lot better. In the end, she just nodded tightly and about-faced.

They jogged on, reaching a break in the corridor where two more passageways snaked away, leading to the shutdown switches.

"Good luck," Jennifer said.

"You too," he replied.

"Remember to plug into the console so we can sync up," she said.

"Got it."

They took off as the countdown timer announced that they now had six minutes left. Already, he could smell the acrid reek of a toxic spill and activated his internal air supply, closing off his vents. He reached the end of the corridor, turned and hesitated for a second. The whole rest of the corridor floor was covered in bright, glowing green liquid. Sighing, telling himself that he'd be fine, he began slogging through the muck.

He felt it begin to eat away at the suit immediately.

Jack picked up the pace, running now. He hit the end of the corridor, turned the next corner and nearly ran into the arms of a Demon that was stomping around in the toxic sludge. Okay, so, Demons weren't affected by this crap. Great. Shouting in surprise, Jack aimed his pistol, his only real weapon just then, and opened fire, while backing up. Muzzle flare flashed and the thing roared as it stomped towards him, taking bullets in its big open mouth. The last shot managed to hit one of its strange, golden eyes.

That halted its advance, if only briefly.

Feeling the press of time, Jack reached for his next ammo magazine and came up empty, his hand bumping against the radiation suit.

"Oh, you are shitting me!" he screamed in fear and frustration.

He'd forgotten to pocket some of the magazines in the suit! Continuing to backpedal, he hastily unzipped the suit and reached inside. Fumbling around, he found a magazine, ripped it out and slapped it in the pistol, raised it and started squeezing the trigger as fast as possible. It took the entire rest of the magazine to do it, but the Demon went down. Sighing with relief, he reloaded again, then rezipped the suit and ran off, moving as fast as he could the whole way.

Finally, he hit the end of the maze and found the console. Rushing up to it, he activated it and linked his suit's comms suite to the console's.

"Okay, Jennifer, I'm here," he said. "What do I do?"

Her voice came back through a haze of static, tinny and quiet. _"The keypad there, punch in eight four six,"_ she replied.

He did it. "Done."

" _Okay. There's a big, green switch. It should be in the down position. If it is, flip it up."_

He found it, saw it was in the down position and flipped it. "Done."

" _Okay, there's a flat, octagonal red button in the upper right hand corner of the control panel. Do you see it?"_

"Yes, I see it."

" _On three, we're going to push it together. One, two, three."_

He pushed the button, the console chimed, and everything lit up red. Was that good or bad? He waited, holding his breath, listening to the sizzle and pop of the toxic goop eating through his suit. Finally, Jennifer came back.

" _That did it! Now get out of there, that can't be good for your armor."_

"On it," he replied. "See you soon."

He turned and made his way back through the maze as quickly as he could. A moment later, he was finally free of the toxic spill. He opened back up his vents and turned off his internal oxygen supply. As soon as he was on dry land again, he quickly began getting out of the radiation suit, as it was practically melting off of him at that point. Well, the boots at least. By the time he finished getting them off, Jennifer had come back.

"Almost finished?" he asked.

The clock had gotten to two minutes now and he was starting to get very antsy, though he hadn't heard it since they'd initiated the shutdown.

"Yes," Jennifer replied as they started making their way back to the main room. "The shutdown we hit stopped the meltdown, the repairs they're doing are keeping it from getting too bad again. Although it's little more than a patch job. We really shouldn't be on this moon after a few hours. Less, if at all possible."

"Couldn't agree with you more."

They made their way back through the facility, having to put down another clutch of Imps and zombies that had wandered into their path since then. Jack was beginning to feel that strange sense of dislocation he sometimes got when he went on for just too long, like the world was beginning to fade to gray. Definitely a bad sign. He tried to force himself to focus again as they came back to the main control room about the same time the other three showed back up.

"I haven't heard that announcement for some time, I'm assuming we're not going to die?" Green asked as they reunited.

"Lemme check," Jennifer replied.

While she worked, Jack looked at Green and Stratton. "I'm assuming the two of you are okay with heading for the Hangar?" he asked.

Green nodded. "That's where we were going," she replied.

"We're good," Jennifer said. "For now at least."

"Perfect," Jack replied, turning and making his way for the exit. "Let's get to the tram and swap some stories."


	29. EPISODE 01: Cold Reality

"This is what happened," Green began.

They had made it out of the Nuke Plant and to the last tram out of hell. Or at least Jack damned well hoped it was. Up ahead, the Hangar loomed, though it was a long ride. He didn't like their odds about crossing the surface, given how many monsters were out there on the surface, but the tram tunnel was intact and there didn't even seem to be anything inside of it. So now they sat in the tram, listening to Green's and Stratton's tale of blood and death.

"Stratton and I are the only surviving members of Gehenna Squad. We were one of a few squads that, before the incident, were sent regularly into Hell to provide protection for an outpost the UAC had constructed there. We've since learned that they've known about this place for close to a year, and have _multiple_ operations going on. Not just here on the two moons, but elsewhere in the solar system as well. Unfortunately, we have no idea where or what their status is. They made it seem like this was brand new, like we were the first into the region, but it was all BS. Anyway, we'd recently been shifted over to Deimos, but they wouldn't tell us why, so that's where we were, in the Deimos Anomaly, when it all went down."

She stopped talking then. She'd taken off her helmet. Green looked harrowed and haunted, her eyes bloodshot and baggy. She'd produced a pack of cigarettes, Yeheyuans, from somewhere and had given one to Jack when he'd asked for it. The two of them smoked now as everyone listened to her miserable tale.

"We fought. And fought. And fought. They were endless. I watched most of my squad die, most of the staff die. Then one of the Imps got on me and choked me out. I thought I was dead. I woke up a few times, being dragged through the base, but I don't really remember it. The next thing I know, I'm strung up, naked, with about a dozen others. Only four of them were still alive. I managed to get myself unhooked and the others down as well before anything came looking. We found out we were in Command Control and skulked around for awhile. I had Stratton, two Space Marines and a terrified tech with me.

"After quite awhile of creeping through vents and crawlspaces and the shadows, we managed to get together uniforms and some kind of weapons. We started pulling guerrilla tactics on them, taking the things down wherever we could. They were _everywhere_ in Command Control. We decided to head back to the Anomaly, to see if we could figure out some way of getting these assholes out of here, since it's obvious that's where they came from..."

She trailed off, a miserable look on her face, and took a long pull on the cigarette. She exhaled a huge formless cloud of blue smoke that wreathed her tired face. "It was a total fucking waste. Lost the tech and one of the Marines in the process, only to find out that the gateway wasn't going to be any damned help to us, especially when we realized where we were."

"Wait...where are we?" Jack asked.

"You mean you don't know?" she replied, looking at him evenly.

He thought he did know. He glanced uncomfortably at the others, who stared silently back at him, then returned his gaze to Green and shook his head.

"We're in Hell," she replied simply. "The whole moon got sucked in somehow. I'd recognize that goddamned sky anywhere."

Jack felt his stomach turn over again. He thought that if he had anything left, he might have puked right then. With an effort, he got himself back under control.

"So then what happened?" he managed to ask. He needed something to keep him distracted, and Green's story of survival was fairly compelling.

"Well, we fought our way back through the buildings. We managed to find a bigger arsenal on the way, so we started kicking ass and taking names. We were going to head for the Hangar. Unfortunately, we got bogged down back in the Nuke Plant and ended up losing the other Marine in the process...and then you showed up and saved our asses."

"Thanks for that, by the way," Stratton said.

Jack chuckled, then frowned. "We did a scan of the whole moon...didn't find any life signs but you, us...and one other in the Hangar. They weren't looking so good."

"Damn, I was hoping there might be survivors in the Hangar..." Green muttered. She shook her head and stubbed out her mostly dead cig on her armor, then flicked it away. "Well, maybe he'll have some answers."

"To what?" Jenkins asked.

"To where the hell we're going to go. How we're going to get out of here. I mean, even if we find a ship, where do we go? We're no longer in our own universe. We're in a parallel dimension. We're in Hell. We need another gateway, and I can't imagine they're just lying around," Green said, frowning deeply.

Jack felt cold all over at that. He'd been somehow avoiding thinking about that harsh reality. He'd been thinking that if they just got to the Hangar, if they just found a ship, then...somehow, everything would be okay.

But that was no longer the case.

Not even by a long shot.

He almost wanted to give up, right then and there. Going home now seemed impossible. Utterly impossible, inconceivable. It was no longer a goal, merely a fantasy. Right then, as he sat at the edge of despair, he suddenly heard the voice his drill instructor from boot thundering through his head: _"Suck it up, Private! Impossible is just a big word, thrown around by small men!"_ It was like a bucket of icy water across the fires of his mind, combating against terror and despair. With a sigh, he took a long, hard pull on his Yeheyuan, stubbed the rest out on his armor and flicked it away as Green had, then blew out a huge plume of smoke through his nostrils.

"Maybe he will," he said finally.

Right now, they had no other destination in mind but the Hangar, no other place to go. So either it would hold the answers...or it wouldn't.

Jack hoped against hope that it would. He got up and headed for the front, suddenly wanting to be alone as he heard Jennifer and Jenkins begin to tell their own story about how they'd come up from Mars City on a rescue mission, and the bloody, brutish hell they'd found. They were on the final leg of their journey. Something occurred to him a moment later and he poked his head back out. "Update them on the names of the creatures," he said.

"Good idea," Jennifer replied, and proceeded to do so.

Jack sank back into the conductor's chair and gently massaged his temples, his helmet abandoned on the floor beside him. He was so damned tired...he wanted to say something like, _I'll sleep when I'm dead._ And although it was more than likely true, he felt like he was on his last leg. Whatever they found in that Hangar, Jack knew that he would need a break once they were safe. If that ever happened. Or he was going to make a mistake sooner or later, and it was going to get him, or worse, someone else, killed.

"We're almost there," he called back as the tram started to go into the airlock bay. He reached down, grabbed his helmet and locked it into place.

One more fight. One last battle.

For now, at least.

As they cycled through the airlock and rolled into what Jack prayed was the last goddamned tram station he had to see in his whole life, he felt like something was wrong. It was a feeling he'd become familiar with. There was a kind of pattern to the madness of this place, of these two slaughterhouse moons. Ironically, he felt...well, safest wasn't the right word, but most secure, when he was duking it out with some of the creatures, shooting and ducking and strafing. Because he knew what he was doing then.

But at times like these, when he came to an area that should be crawling with bad guys and there was nothing? It felt off. Like, the universe was tricking him into a false sense of security, showing him an empty room as if to say, _Nothing bad's going to happen. You can relax._ And then bam! The other shoe dropped like a fucking hammer. It was a paranoid thought, of course. The universe didn't actually work that way. There were no laws governing things like that. Then again, he'd also thought that the universe didn't contain living monsters before today, so…

So now he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

All of this felt like it was building up to something, especially considering this was the last building on the whole moon. What better time to snatch away victory, to yank away their hope, than right before they were going to get it?

Jack shook off the dark, paranoid thoughts as the tram finished settling into its station. It looked relatively intact and not all that bloody, which made him even more paranoid. Well, it was pretty far from the maelstrom that had hit this place, so it stood to reason that it was the least damaged. He headed back to join the others.

"We all ready for this?" he asked.

Green nodded, then yawned suddenly. "Goddamn, gonna need a nap soon," she muttered.

"Don't we all," Jack replied. He hefted his pistol. It was the only weapon he had left that had ammo in it besides the rocket launcher. He honestly hoped he didn't need the damned thing. Leading the way, Jack opened the doors and stepped out onto the dark metal platform beyond. The place was decently well-lit and deserted. Abandoned tools lay scattered across the area and a lonely corpse, a woman in a blue jumpsuit missing her arms, lay beside a pile of silver crates bearing the UAC logo. Seeing that damned logo sent a wave of anger through him.

How many people had died as a result of their goddamned tinkering? Hundreds? A thousand? More? He had no idea how far this thing had even spread. Green had said that there were other research sites in the solar system. Where? The moon? Europa maybe? The asteroid belt would be a great place to hide one of those…

Earth?

No, he pushed that thought away immediately. No, not Earth. They would never be that stupid. Even with all this bullshit happening, they would never been that stupid. He marched across the platform. They had a lone survivor to find. Getting up to the door, he hit the open button and held his pistol with both hands, aiming it into the entrance lobby beyond. No immediate threats, but he didn't like what he saw as he moved in.

"What...what is this?" Jenkins whispered.

"It's...webbing," Jack muttered.

"Webbing, like...like spiderwebs?" Stratton asked, the fear naked in his voice.

"That's what it looks like," Jennifer replied.

"Stay sharp," Green snapped.

He glanced back at her as she said that, and it suddenly occurred to him that she outranked him. He hesitated. "Sergeant Green, um...I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.

She blinked, staring at him, utterly bewildered. "What?"

"You outrank me. I was assuming command," he replied.

She laughed. "I think we're beyond command at this point. Let's just...keep doing what we've been doing. We shouldn't get hung up on who's in charge until a command decision is needed, and so far, there hasn't been one."

He nodded reluctantly. Honestly, he'd been very happy to pass the torch back to someone else. After Blackmore died, he'd awkwardly assumed command again. Though when there did come time to make some kind of decision, he planned on deferring to whatever she came up with. She seemed smart, focused and tough as hell.

They kept walking through the lobby. The main entrance to the hangar bays themselves at the back was utterly covered in thick, white strands of webbing.

"I'm not sure we're going to get past this," Jack muttered, studying it from a safe distance. He didn't like the look of it at all...it _did_ look like a spider's web...but what spider was big enough to produce _this_?

As if they didn't have enough problems.

"Let's check out the side tunnels and see what we can see," Green replied.

They broke left first. Jack and Green took point, opening the door and moving slowly into the corridor beyond. The lighting was poor and they activated their flashlights. There was more webbing along the ceiling, and the fact that almost every single vent grate in the area had been broken open did nothing to set his nerves at ease. There were just a few doors to check out and they set to it. The first was a break room that had mostly been covered in webbing. There didn't seem to be anything of use in the room and Jack thought he heard something move, so he quickly closed the door and let it be. The next was a bloodied bathroom that was otherwise vacant. The final room was a storage bay, but it held nothing of value.

"That was a bust," Stratton muttered as they left the left side.

"Hopefully the next one will give us more luck," Green replied.

It turned out that it would. They cleared a few more vacant rooms with webbing across the ceilings and some of the walls, and finally managed to locate a blowtorch. Jack picked it up, studying it, and figured it'd be as good as anything to get them through that webbing. It wasn't like he was particularly eager to go crawling under the floor again. Especially with all these webs around. He'd never really gotten over his fear of spiders.

As they regrouped in the main lobby and he began to set fire to the webbing, he winced, expecting some kind of retaliation, perhaps a furious roar or the sudden appearance of some fresh horror conjured up from the deepest, darkest pits of hell. But there was nothing. The webbing caught easily and burned away, clearing a path into the corridor beyond. The hallway was huge and riddled with blood and bullet holes. Obviously some kind of fighting had gone on there. Along the wall ahead of them, he could see varied doors that led into the hangar bays. He noticed there were about eight bays and that the design of this place seemed sleeker, more efficient.

Deimos Base had gotten preferential treatment.

Not that it honestly freaking mattered in the end.

"Where to?" Jennifer murmured.

"Control Tower," Green replied, and set off. They followed after her. Jack was getting anxious, he wanted to get the hell out of there. Not that he was sure how they could even _do_ that at this point. But he wanted to progress somehow, wanted to make some kind of advancement towards getting out of this place and back to a normal life. It was funny, he thought as they came to the Control Tower. Before, when he'd been shipped to Mars, he'd practically been contemplating suicide. His response to the idea of being a Space Marine.

But now?

That life looked like goddamned paradise compared to this hell.

It was very interesting, and horrifying, in a way, just what a change in perspective could do to you. How it could change everything. They reached the Control Tower's base and did a quick sweep of the ground floor, which had a small galley, a break room, a bathroom that doubled as a shower room, and a small storage room that had several cots in it, likely for technicians and air traffic controllers to take quick naps on long-haul shifts.

It was basically clear of destruction and webbing.

But that wasn't the case as they ascended. They hurried up the stairway that folded back in on itself several times, leading up to the Control Room itself. The webbing got thicker the higher up they went. Jack led the way with his pistol, feeling like they were getting close to something important, though he had no idea what. As they finally reached the top, they came into a room where the walls were utterly covered in the stuff. And this time, they began to see shapes in the webs. Dark, cocooned figures.

"Are they..." Jenkins whispered.

"The base personnel," Jack finished. "See if any of them are still alive. There's a good chance this is where that life sign was."

They spread out. The webbing here was so thick that the windows were almost completely covered and only a muted crimson light bled in through the thinner parts, giving the room an awful, sickening feel. It was like some of the places he'd seen in his nightmares just recently. Most of the bodies were so utterly cocooned in the webbing that they were nothing more than uncertain shapes. He could still make out their heads, though, and he took the opportunity to shoot each in the skull once, just in case they might still be alive.

It was probably a waste of ammo, but he wasn't willing to leave someone here like this.

Near the front of the room, over the primary workstation, they found their sole survivor. Their mysterious life signal.

"Doctor Carmack," Green growled. She practically spat the words out.

"Who is this?" Jack asked, staring at the man who was strung up against the wall, mostly covered by the thick, dark gray webbing. His head, neck and some of his chest were still exposed. He looked painfully thin, his lanky black hair hanging around his pallid, gaunt face. He coughed weakly and smiled at them.

His teeth were a broken ruin of blood and enamel.

"Sergeant Green, how lovely to see you again," he said, then coughed again. "What brings you to my neighborhood?" he asked, then offered a thin, wheezing laugh.

"Cut the shit, Carmack," Green snapped. "This was one of the men in charge of the project over on Phobos," she explained. "The brains behind it."

"You do me too much credit. I was in charge of the science department...but I was just one component," he said, then drifted off, muttering to himself. Abruptly, he winced and a look of agony ripped across his face. Whatever it was that was plaguing him subsided, if only for the moment. He looked at them again.

"I don't have much longer, so if you want to chat, make it fast," he said.

"Where are we?" Green asked.

"Where do you think we are? We're in the other dimension. We're in Hell, hovering in the skies of Hell Itself. Somehow we were pulled through the gateway."

"How do we get back? The Deimos Anomaly is gone," Green demanded.

He began laughing again, then coughed raggedly and spat some blood onto the floor. "There's just one way left, as far as I know," he replied. His humor was gone now, he looked very weak and very near death. "The Tower of Babel, on the far side of the region. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it. Get there. We established a portal there, a smaller version of the big daddy in the Anomalies. If it's still functional, it'll take you straight to Mars City."

"Mars City!? You built a portal in Mars City?!" Jack cried.

Carmack opened his mouth to respond, perhaps to defend himself, but what came out was simply: "Time's up...God forgive me..."

Before any of them could do anything, his skull abruptly exploded, spraying them all with blood and gore. From the bloody ruin, something was birthed. A new horror emerged. Six spindly legs emerged from the visceral debris of Doctor Carmack's head and at first Jack thought he was seeing the man's skull over the body of this...this spidery horror. As it moved, shifted, gained its feet, perching awkwardly on the body and the webbing, he realized that the skull _was_ its body. It was flipped over, upside down, and the mouth was on top.

The mouth opened and issued a little shriek.

"What the fuck!?" Jenkins screamed.

The thing jumped at Jack and he screamed as it wrapped around his helmet. Eight black, maddened, alien eyes stared in at him through his faceplate, mere inches away, as he stumbled backwards, tripped over something and fell flat on his ass. Screaming in raw panic and terror, he dropped his pistol and reached up. Grabbing the thing, he literally broke it off of his helmet. He could hear the loud snaps of its legs as he ripped and tore at the thing. He suddenly felt it jerked away from his helmet and saw it get thrown across the room by Jennifer. As soon as it was clear of him, Jenkins blasted it away with a shotgun shell.

"Holy shit," he moaned as he groped for his pistol. Even in his terror his mind wouldn't let him forget that he'd dropped his weapon.

He found it and took Jennifer's proffered hand. She yanked him up. "You okay?" she asked, face pale and eyes wide with worry.

His faceplate had been cracked in the process, and he was shaking worse than he had since this whole thing had started, but he was okay. He nodded. "Yeah...yeah, I'll be fine," he replied, looking down at his pistol.

"We need to leave, _right now..._ " Green hissed at them.

Jack felt a fresh bolt of black terror shoot through him and he raised his pistol. Looking around, he saw dark slots all along the base of the room. Ventilation shafts, he realized. And black eyes were staring out at them.

As soon as they began backing up, a veritable flood of the horrible skull spiders began to spill forth from the vents.

"Fall back!" Green roared. "Fall back!" She punctuated her sentence with a burst from her submachine gun.

Jack raised his pistol and opened fire as he moved backwards with the other. Having a clear threat was helping throw off the sense of horror and mindless terror of his experience. He began popping off rounds, covering their retreat, as dozens of the spider things poured into the room. These spiders let out not shrieks, but deep, guttural growls that sent chills up and down his spine. It was not a sound they should have been able to make.

He emptied the magazine and reached for a reload, then felt a fresh wave of cold fear slither through him as he found that he had one left. He was down to these bullets and his rockets. And rockets didn't really seem like the best thing to use against these little bastards. A dozen of them fell to the gunfire as reached they door, then another dozen, and finally they were all through the door, back into the stairwell.

"I'm out!" Jack called. He'd fired his last shot.

Green tossed him a mag for his SMG. "Make it count!" she replied.

He snatched it out of the air and reloaded his dead weapon, briefly resurrecting it. At least the door to the room was closed now, though even as they hurried down the stairs in a single, strung-out file, he could hear those deep, guttural growls. God, those things freaked him the hell out. Why did it have to be spiders? Why?!

Despite this, despite everything, all the horror, he actually felt good. Thrilled. Ecstatic even. Because they had a goal! They had a ticket home! Okay, it was kind of a flimsy ticket, all they had was the words of a dying, evil madman, but it was something to work towards. It was a _clear goal_. And Marines tended to work way better with a clear, concise goal in mind. Or at least that had been his experience thus far.

"Oh, shit!" Jennifer cried.

She was ahead of him and looking up as they pounded down the metal staircase. He followed her gaze and echoed her sentiment.

"Oh, shit!"

More spiders were coming at them, they were descending rapidly from the ceiling on thick strands of webbing.

"Go, go! Run! Don't waste ammo!" Green called.

They ran and soon found themselves leaping down entire flights, landing with heavy grunts and then repeating the process. The spiders issued those awful growls as they drew closer. Eternity passed and they finally managed to hit the ground floor again. As soon as they were out, back into the main corridor, Green hit the close button.

"Keep going!" she called. "We've got to find a ship!"

Jack knew she was right. He kept running, not letting himself rest even for a second, and hit the first door that was available. Hitting the open button, he looked inside, sweeping the vast hangar beyond with his gaze in a tight arc.

"Empty!" he called. There was nothing there but scattered crates and a lot of webbing. No ships, not even a land vehicle.

They ran on, hitting the second and third hangars, and finding them in similar condition. Apparently, fourth time was the charm. Jack stepped through the door, SMG raised, as he spied a ship. He had no idea what condition it was in, beyond the fact that the exterior seemed relatively intact and it wasn't obviously broken.

"Ship!" he called out.

The others hurried in behind him and they closed the door. All became still and silent. Suddenly, Jack's good cheer leeched away. Something was wrong here. The hangar was vast and dark. It felt like a mausoleum. The webbing was thick around here, but he could see no movement among the shadows, could hear no growls or the tick of bony legs as they scurried across metal deckplates. But there was definitely something here.

"Secure the area," Green said quietly.

They spread out. There were a great deal of crates around, a lot of them stacked up high in haphazard piles. There were parts and tools scattered everywhere among other debris. Jack moved away from the ship, to the right side of the hangar, with Jennifer. Green and Stratton took the left and Jenkins moved slowly towards the vessel itself. Jack kept his SMG ready, flashlight on to help push back the gloom.

Nothing around him but crates and more crates, and evidence of battle. He glanced at Jennifer, who returned his nervous gaze. She could sense it, too. They all could. Death was lurking somewhere nearby, watching them from the shadows.

Jack heard a faint creak of metal, like something huge shifting, somewhere behind him, and turned around, looking for the source of the sound. That's about the time he saw Jenkins slowly backing away from the ship.

"Uh...guys?" he asked, his voice breaking.

Green and Stratton hurried back to see what was happening, reappearing from their own crate maze. A piece of metal debris, long and slender, was hovering in the air, following Jenkins slowly away from the ship.

After everything that had happened, after all the surprises and terrors and impossibilities, Jack had to admit that he was _not_ ready for this. His mind tried frantically to piece together some reason, some explanation for what he saw before him. Could it be a Spectre holding it aloft? But no, that didn't make sense. Besides the fact that he couldn't see the faint shimmering effect of one, nor the fact that it didn't stand to reason that this was something a Spectre could do, it was being held too perfectly, too rigidly, and advancing too steadily.

That same creak of metal came again, and this time he saw it was the ship that had shifted slightly. For a second, his gaze snapped up.

A second was all it took.

" _OH GOD!_ " he screamed in raw, unabashed terror.

He saw it. He saw it plain as day and had no idea how he could have missed it when he'd turned around. It should have been the most obvious thing in the universe. He had thought of those growling spiders they'd faced as giant spiders, but now he knew he was sorely mistaken. _This_ was a giant spider...except that it wasn't a spider, not exactly. He could clearly see what appeared to be a milky white female torso sprouting from a base where eight legs grew from as well. Coming out the back was the rest of the body, what looked to be a big, bulky back end, like that of a tarantula. Jack's terrified mind could come up with what it was called.

She stared down at them with a constellation of eyes as black as polished obsidian. And she knew that they had spotted her.

The horrible beast had been holding her arms up, suddenly, she thrust them forward. Down below, the rod-shaped piece of debris that had been hovering abruptly shot forward. Jenkins screamed, though only briefly, as the debris penetrated his helmet and skull, shattering his visor. He dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap of armored limbs.

" _JENKINS!_ " Jack heard himself scream as he opened fire, hosing the spider-woman thing down SMG fire. The others screamed as well and joined him. The giant spider issued a shrieking roar of rage and suddenly hopped off the ship, making the whole thing shudder. It, not she, it was a monster, a creature, a demon, landed with an earth-shattering crash in a large open space in front of the ship. Twisted bits of metal flew everywhere. The enormous, sickly white spider-woman seemed to absorb the gunfire.

Jack's SMG clicked empty. The others' weapons were empty as well.

Still the beast stood.

It gestured with one hand and a crate rose up, then smashed into Jack, sending him flying. He grunted in pain as he hit the floor, bounced, hit the floor again and slammed into a stack of crates. His world became a chaotic mess of rending metal and crashing crates. Struggling to get out from beneath the crates, his mind worked furiously to figure out how to deal with this thing. Except that he knew that his options had been reduced to a singular course of action. Jack shoved a crate off of him and surged to his feet.

"Get it away from the ship!" he screamed as he groped for his rocket launcher. He knew he'd saved it for something.

Except that he couldn't seem to reach it.

"Shit!" he screamed as he realized it was missing. "Get it away from the ship! Keep it busy! I can kill it!"

He didn't know if the others had heard him, or even their condition. All he knew right now was that he needed to find his damned rocket launcher or none of them were going to live. He turned around, searching frantically for his missing weapon. There were crates and debris everywhere. He began violently shoving them aside. His faceplate was cracked worse now, making the job that much harder and more irritating. Behind him, Jack could hear the others screaming, gunfire, the crash of something being thrown every now and then, and the high-pitched shrieking of the spider monster. Where the hell was it!?

"There!" Jack whispered, seeing the tube sticking out from beneath one of the crates. He flipped the crate over and snatched up the launcher.

Turning around, he saw that they'd led the monster away from the ship. This needed to be over, _now_. Jack sighted the launcher, mounting it on his shoulder. He saw that his HUD linked automatically with the digital zoom scope, so that was nice. Aiming, he primed the weapon, activated the red laser and played it over the thing's huge body.

"Get clear!" Jack screamed.

As soon as the others dove out of the way, he squeezed the trigger. The huge spider queen turned around, perhaps sensing the threat, at the last second, and managed to line up its face directly with the path of the rocket.

The explosion was spectacular.

The creature disappeared in a red-orange fireball and a plume of gray gore. Flaming bits of it rained down over the entire hangar bay. All fell still and silent. Jack slowly lowered the still-smoking rocket launcher. He didn't know what to say, or do, or think even. He felt...empty. Mute. Like all of his thoughts had just been kicked out of his brain and it would take awhile to gather them again. Movement, up ahead.

He saw Jennifer emerging from behind a stack of silver crates and clung to the first thought that popped into his mind upon seeing her: check and see if she's okay. Automatically, he slung the launcher and started walking, crossing the hangar towards her, his boots echoing loudly on the deckplates. As he approached, Green and Stratton emerged.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

Jennifer looked over at him. She seemed as dazed and shell-shocked as he felt. Slowly, she nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine...you?"

"I'm okay," he replied.

Then he looked over and down at Jenkins's corpse. He'd basically been decapitated by the attack. Now he was just another dead body, another headless corpse, among the dozens, the hundreds that populated Deimos Base. He'd been reduced to an object. Jack shook his head slowly. He felt anger begin to rise in him, but it didn't get far. He was simply too tired. But he wouldn't let Jenkins become just another body…

Except, what could he do?

What could he do, beyond remember him?

Nothing rose to the surface of his mind and he felt a little bit like crying. But like the anger, it was subdued, pallid and mute.

"We...we should check the ship," Green said finally.

They had gathered in the area where the spider queen had been killed. Jack followed her gaze to the ship, their ticket home.

He nodded. "Yeah, we should do that. See what condition it's in." It was a dumb, obvious thing to say, but saying it helped ground him back to reality. While Green and Stratton headed for the ship, which wasn't so much a ship as it was a little transport vehicle, the kind they'd ridden up to Phobos in all those hours ago, (hours that felt like years now), he turned back to Jenkins's body. A little voice in his head, persistent and flat, told him that the man wouldn't be using his ammo anymore, and Jack didn't have any for himself.

He forced himself to search the body, his hands slowly, methodically going through the pockets of his security armor. He came up with some shotgun shells and a few magazines for his pistol. "Thanks," Jack said softly as he stood back up. He paused, then said, "I'm sorry." It seemed like the most appropriate thing to say.

He turned and saw Jennifer lingering, halfway between him and the ship. She was looking at him. He moved to join her.

"I'm sorry he didn't make it," she said quietly as they joined Green and Stratton at the ship.

"So am I," he muttered.

They walked to the ship and set to work trying to figure out how functional it was. Nearly half an hour passed as they determined this. Jack slowly came back to himself, the work helping ground him again. The ship was in surprisingly good shape. It had some wear and tear, and its power cells would have to be swapped, but otherwise, it was actually flyable. Once they'd determined this, they gathered in the main bay of the vessel.

"Okay, so," Green began, "we should search the area for supplies and replace the power cells. Then we can fire it up and-"

"Sergeant Green," Jack said. She looked over at him. "I'm sorry, but...I need a break. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm almost literally dead on my feet. I'm not going to be any use until I get some sleep and a meal."

She looked like she was going to argue, but then she glanced over at Jennifer, then at Stratton. She sighed. "You're right," she said quietly. "We need a rest. We have no idea what's down below. Well, Stratton and I have something of an idea, and we're going to need to be up to par if we're going to take this on."

"How long can we afford to stay?" Stratton asked.

"The only timeline we're working against, at least that I know, is the nuke plant," Jennifer said. "I might have been exaggerating a little with the nuclear plant when I said we only had a few hours. We should probably be safe for a day or so, and I mean, that's even considering something goes wrong. Which, given our luck lately..."

"We'll risk it," Jack said. "We don't have much choice. If we're going into Hell, I want to be rested and fed."

"And showered," Stratton said.

"Yeah, that too," Jack murmured. "I guess we should get to it. We'll have to secure the area, inventory our supplies, figure out shifts..."

"Then let's get to it," Green said, and began trudging off out of the hangar.

It took close to two hours to prep the area. They locked up the ship and Green managed to key its alarm system to her armor, so it would warn them if anything even approached it. They moved back to the area beneath the control tower, not the most desirable place, but it was surprisingly clear of corpses and blood.

And monsters.

They were paranoid of the littler spiders, but didn't see them anywhere. When Jack finally probed the vents, he found several of them inside, and they were dead. The best he could figure was that they were being controlled somehow by the queen. And given that she was now in several hundred charred bits, they must have died. Sucked to be them, but great for him and the others. Once they were secure, they picked over the supplies. That's what took the most time, since they did a quick sweep of the whole entire structure.

It was disheartening.

It seemed as if the forces of evil had done a pretty good job picking the place over. They hardly found more than a half-dozen magazines of ammo, a little bit of medical supplies and, thankfully, some good stores of food and drink. Once that was finished, they secured a corridor that led to a break room and a bathroom/shower area. They were too paranoid to completely let their guard down, and ended up doing everything in shifts.

Jack and Jennifer managed to track down more uniforms and headed into the shower room while Green and Stratton sat outside it and ate. The two of them stripped down and got into the shower. They took awhile to patch each other up, then wash up, and then, despite the fact that he didn't think he'd be able to, given all that had happened, he and Jennifer had a frantic, short-lived lovemaking session. When it was over, they dried off and dressed in the new uniforms. Jack felt renewed and refreshed as he laced up the boots, though it wasn't the same boost he'd received the last time he'd managed to do this on Phobos Base.

As soon as they were out, Green and Stratton went in and had their own shower. Jack and Jennifer grabbed whatever food and drink they could find from the break room, sat outside the shower area and ate, standing guard.

And, judging by the sounds coming from the shower area, it seemed that Green and Stratton had a similar relationship to him and Jennifer.

Once they were finished, Jack and Jennifer ended up going to sleep first, passing out on some cots they'd ended up pulling into the break room. Almost the second he laid his head down, he passed out. Mercifully, there were no dreams, though he woke up what felt like a few seconds later with feelings of intense but uncertain feelings of fear and anxiety. Green was waking him up with a hand on his shoulder.

"How long was I out?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Six hours," she replied.

It felt like too long, and it felt like nowhere near enough. He yawned and rubbed at his eyes as he got up, Jennifer doing much of the same.

"Your turn," he said as he got up.

Green and Stratton laid down and immediately fell asleep. As they watched over them, sitting in some only somewhat comfortable chairs, Jack couldn't help but think about all the people they'd lost getting here. He'd pretty much gotten Stanmore killed, and then having to watch his team die one by one to the unrelenting hordes of hell. Blackmore, Baker, Peterson, Thompson, McGee...and now Jenkins. He and Jennifer were the only two left of their squad now. And now, they were the only four people left on this whole moon.

He wondered if there were any survivors in Hell.

He and Jennifer said little as they waited for the six hours to pass. They both took the time to strip down their weapons, clean them and put them back together. They also did what they could do patch up their armor…thought it was in pretty bad shape after all that had happened. Even Combat Armor could only stand up to so much abuse and punishment. Jack and Jennifer would start up conversation every now and then, but it often trailed off, as they both had too much on their minds. When the six hours were up, they woke the others.

Once they were up and back in their armor, the quartet of hell-stricken survivors got onboard the troop transport and fired it up.

The airlock doors opened onto a landscape of hell-lit horror.

And they began their descent into Hell.


	30. EPISODE 01: Further Into the Storm

**PART FOUR  
** – _INFERNO_ –

* * *

"Hey, you okay?"

Jack looked up. He realized that he'd been staring at the gently vibrating deckplates of the ship for several minutes now.

"I'm not cracking up...I think," he replied.

Jennifer looked worried, but also tired. But she wasn't exhausted anymore, at least. Neither was he. Their brief R & R in the Hangar had helped. Green had taken over flying duty on the grounds that...she was the only one who knew how to pilot. Stratton was up front with her, leaving him and Jennifer alone in the back. A part of Jack found it strange and somehow hilarious that, even when they were almost literally in Hell itself, they were still pairing off and hooking up. But he supposed that was the nature of humanity.

Almost everyone wanted to fuck.

Especially if they were going to die soon.

Although...he looked over at Jennifer, who was still looking at him. He took her hand and squeezed it, she squeezed back. For him, it was a little more than just looking to hook up. "I'll be okay, Jennifer. What about you?"

"I hope I will be too. This is...this is all so much. I mean, we're in...Hell."

"It's not Hell," Jack said.

"How do you know? I mean, we can't know."

He shook his head. "It's not _actually_ Hell, Jennifer. It's just another dimension that's home to a bunch of sick assholes that need a lesson in manners."

That made her laugh, and some of the tension seemed to disappear. "I guess you're right," she murmured. "This is just freaky."

"I know. I'm scared shitless myself. But...hey, we've made it this far, right? I mean, seriously, we got thrown into the meat grinder on Phobos, and it was even worse over here on Deimos. And we kicked their ass all over those two moons. Yeah, it's gonna be tough, but we can do this. We're gonna make it home."

He almost believed it himself.

Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, we got this."

The whole shuttle jerked suddenly. A shriek of rending metal sounded and, on the heels of it, they could hear Green cursing sharply.

"What's happening!?" Jack called.

"Strap in! Mechanical problems! I think...shit! We're going down! Stratton, get your ass back there and strap in! _Now!_ "

As Jack and Jennifer strapped into their seats, Stratton stumbled back to join them. He sat down heavily across from them and quickly snapped the restraining straps into place over his chest, then gripped the chair tightly. The engines sounded horribly strained now, and right as Jack began to ask what was happening, he heard a series of sharp pops, followed by a small explosion, and then the awful silence of no engines.

"We're a dead stick!" Green roared. "We're going down! Hold on!"

They were in free fall now. Jack could feel it, his stomach flipping over and over, icy terror filling his veins. Goddamnit, he refused to die in a shuttle crash, not after all the crap he'd gone through, all the dangers he'd faced down. Not here, not not, not like this. But what could he do? Nothing but hang on and hope.

Wasn't that the fucking story of his life?

The shuttle was rattling violently now, and every now and then it would shudder powerfully as something was ripped off by the sheer winds. It was awful, terror given a voice. He could hear Green cursing occasionally as she fought the controls, trying to make their landing anything but lethal. He reached over and took Jennifer's hand, squeezing it again, harder this time. She squeezed back. He had just began to open his mouth to ask something, how much longer or when this was going to finally happen, when there was a rending shriek.

And then he was being yanked and twisted in a dozen different directions.

And then something hit his head and all was black.

* * *

"Jack? He's still breathing..."

"I'm fine, thank you."

"Shut up, Stratton. Check his eyes. Here, pull his lid up, take this."

A brilliant light exploded into existence. "Ah! Shit! Get that outta my face!" he complained, clawing weakly.

"He's awake," Jennifer murmured. "Sorry, babe. You've been passed out for fifteen minutes."

The world slid into focus and Jack got his vision back. His head was killing him, and he could feel a dozen other hurts spread across his body like a topography of pain. "Is anything broken?" he muttered weakly, closing his eyes, trying to get his bearings again.

"The shuttle," Green growled. "It's a total wreck."

"Your armor, too babe. All of our armors. They helped us survive the crash basically intact, but they were so torn up from Deimos that they're pretty much useless."

"Of course," Jack muttered.

"That's not all," Stratton said.

He opened his eyes again. "What's the rest of it?"

"Most of our weapons were dinged up pretty bad in the crash."

Jack groaned and slowly sat up. "So what do we have left?"

Green and Stratton moved aside. Green pointed at the deckplates beside her. "You're looking at our current arsenal and inventory."

Jack's gaze fell on four pistols and a handful of magazines. "That...that's it? How?"

"Well, on top of most of our gear getting messed up, there were several hull breaches and stuff got sucked out. We've been searching this damned ship up and down, in every nook and cranny we could find, popped open every compartment...this is literally it," Green replied.

Jack sighed heavily and massaged his temples, closing his eyes, sitting there and taking in this new situation for a moment. No ship, no armor, just a pistol and twenty rounds for each of them. Oh wow, what a shit situation. Finally, he opened his eyes. Slowly, with Jennifer's help, he got to his feet. The ship had landed at a slanted angle. Silently, they each grabbed their pistols and ammunition. Jack checked his sidearm over. It was dinged up, and there was some blood on the barrel, but it was still functional, as far as he could tell.

This sucked even more than Phobos.

Now, all that stood between him and oblivion was twenty bullets. And the situation was even worse. Well, probably. But this time he had people with him. Good, solid Marines. They helped this situation a great deal.

"Well...might as well get started. I don't suppose there's any information we could gather before we go out there?" he asked.

"Well, the atmosphere is breathable, at least, or we'd be suffocating," Green replied. "But our gear is shot, totally fried by the blowout. The best I can do is that I saw what seemed to be a human structure ahead of us by about a quarter mile. It's probably an outpost."

"I guess that's where we should go?" he asked, looking at her.

She nodded. "Yeah. Come on, let's get this over with. I think the easiest way we'll be able to get out is through the cockpit. One of the windows broke completely, pretty much popped out of its frame," she replied, turning and heading back into the cockpit. The others followed in her wake. Jack's brain still felt like it was trying to catch, like it had been knocked offline and was attempting a cold reboot. Which, technically, he supposed was true. He _was_ knocked out for awhile. How many times had he been knocked out recently?

He was going to end up with brain damage.

They found the broken out window and Green began to crawl up and out. Jack looked around the ruined, sparking interior of the cockpit. It was a miracle that she'd survived, and had gotten them down in roughly one piece. How long would their luck hold out? Hopefully until the end, at least. Whatever the end was. Green gave the all clear, and Stratton went up next, then Jennifer, and finally Jack. She turned and offered him a hand and he took it. Her grip was strong, her strength certain as she pulled him up.

Jack felt his breath momentarily leave his body as he got his first good look at Hell.

Not Hell, he reminded himself, not Hell. Just...somewhere else. Some really crappy, awful other dimension that sure _looked_ like Hell…

To their right side was a huge mountain range, the rocks black and red, rising into the bloody crimson skies. Off to their left, he saw a more traditional looking mountain range rising from the land, and at its base, what appeared to be a deep trench. Cutting across the landscape were several rivers of what seemed to be blood, and also lava. Behind them was a vast toxic blackish-green ocean that extended as far away as he could see.

And, dead ahead, dominating their view, was a structure.

It was immense, a giant fortress of black steel, built like a layered cake. It was hard to tell from this distance, the thing might have been a mile off or so, and there was a weird haze to the area, but the base of the structure looked like black rock. It almost looked like the thing had been carve out of what had once been a stand alone mountain. It looked intimidating as hell, but what was worse was the fact that there seemed to be several blood waterfalls coming down the front of it, feeding into a blood moat. It was…

A thought came to Jack, and he almost burst out laughing.

It looked like the most hardcore, metal thing ever.

Far less intimidating was a structure ahead of them, not too far away. It definitely looked human. It was a good first destination.

"I hate this place," Green muttered as she led them down the top of the ship. They hit its edge and jumped down onto a hard, packed ground covered in black sand. "Hated it the first second I set foot in it," she added as they started walking.

Jack wanted to ask her more about her tenure here, he couldn't imagine regularly coming to this place, but the smell started to get to him. It was...horrible. He detected several different scents in there: puke, blood, shit, urine, rotting meat, sulfur, like eggs gone bad, and other, worse things that he couldn't immediately identify. He coughed and spat, but the pervasive scent persisted. He guessed he was just going to have to get used it.

He couldn't wait to find some more armor.

God, what a nightmare this was turning out to be.

No one spoke as they crossed the surface at a brisk pace. Something was nagging at him, well, a lot of things were, but something more immediate, bugging him. He finally had it when he shivered. It was cold here. Hell was supposed to be hot, this place _looked_ hot, but it was maybe fifty degrees or so and a light, chilled wind was drifting across the area. He pushed it out of his awareness as much as he could and kept up a steady pace, pistol in hand, looking for signs of life, signs of trouble. But there was nothing.

The area around them was pretty flat and empty. When he looked back, all he saw was their wrecked ship and that toxic ocean. The ship was still smoking lightly. Something else occurred to him. Jack looked up. He could see no sun, not even a sign of the sun through the strange red mist that hung like a pall of death over the whole area. He returned his attention to the task at hand. They were almost to the outpost now.

As they drew closer, it became obvious that things had gone very wrong at the outpost. All they could see for now was a wall of gray metal, flanked on either side by guard towers. The walls had holes in them, holes _ripped_ into them, and they were riddled with bullet holes and scorch marks. There was a lot of blood, but no bodies.

Never a good sign.

"Move in, nice and easy, standard sweep and clear," Green said.

The three of them acknowledged the order tightly and moved in. The way in, a gate built of pretty solid, sturdy metal, set into the wall equidistant between the two guard towers, was torn open like someone had taken a giant can-opener to it. Green and Jack moved in first, each of them clearing one eighty degrees of the open area beyond. Jack saw four structures: one in each corner and a fifth in the dead center.

He also saw a lot of destruction and signs of battle.

The four of them moved slowly and carefully through the structure, but they might as well have been clomping around and cracking lame jokes: there was no one here, friend or foe. The structures were all very basic things and, despite their ruined state, Jack could discern their nature. One was a simple bunk room, another served as a basic mess hall, a third was storage, a fourth was an armory and the final one, in the center, was a kind of command post. The armory was mostly cleared out, though they managed to find a few more magazines for their pistols, enough so that they each managed to get one more.

So that was nice, at least.

Thirty bullets instead of twenty.

The most important find, however, was the thing that dominated the center of the command post. They all gathered around it, staring at it intently. It was a holographic projector, a solid slab of metal about four feet long by two wide by three high. Green fired it up and, surprisingly, it booted to life, showing them a map of the whole region. Jack immediately recognized the huge black structure he'd seen at first and used it to orient himself.

"Well...this helps at least," Green murmured. She began working the screen in front of her and suddenly the map zoomed in on the big black structure they'd seen, the one they would no doubt first be going to. "Okay, let's see if we can actually, for once, come up with a plan that looks more than fifteen minutes into the future. It seems like they managed to gather some data on all the different structures...even named them."

Info came up on the first structure.

"Hell Keep," she muttered. "It looks like...they set up shop inside the Hell Keep, including...a big armory, a security network, and a motorpool. Perfect. Okay, that's going to be destination number one. We grab guns, get whatever intel we can and then get a vehicle. It looks like our final destination is the Tower of Babel, just like Doctor Asshole said. It's pretty far away...jeez, that'll take days, even if we manage to drive..."

"See if there's a hangar or something in one of the other structures," Jack suggested.

They moved on to the next nearest structure, what would no doubt be their second destination. It was lovingly labeled the Slough of Despair.

"Jeez, who thinks up these damned names?" Jennifer whispered.

"Well, this place sucks enough for these names," Green replied. "Wait...what's this?" she murmured, frowning, studying the information. "Holy shit. There's a network of portals between these structures."

"What? Like...the ones between Phobos and Deimos?" Jack replied.

She shook her head. "No, no, they're..." she frowned, her brow wrinkling in confusion. "It says they're natural to this place. They were already here. Well, shit."

"If we go through them, do we lose all our stuff, like when we went through the portal between the two moons?" Jack asked.

"No, there's a few reports here. They tested them. They say they're safe, they work as intended. And I trust that about as much as I trust the UAC right now but...I think we're going to have to take these portals if we want to make the journey in a reasonable amount of time."

"I don't suppose we can just take the first one to the Tower of Babel?" Stratton asked.

Green shook her head. "No, it doesn't work like that. We'll have to move through each structure, apparently."

Jack sighed heavily. "Great. How many are there?"

Green worked the controls for a bit, and the map returned to its original view. A handful of what might have been called structures became highlighted. Jack's frown deepened as he studied the names of the structures ahead of them. In total, there were eight. They were going to get to visit such lovely places as: Pandemonium, House of Pain, Unholy Cathedral, Mt. Erebus and Limbo. And that was in addition to Hell Keep, Slough of Despair and the Tower of Babel. Holy shit. This was going to be a hell of a trek.

"There's no way around it, is there?" Jennifer asked.

"Not that I can see. This terrain is insanely dangerous..." She trailed off, frowning, studying a specific spot on the map. A mountain range, or more of a cliff sheer, off to the west. She zoomed in on it and a small, though bleak, smile briefly touched her face. "There," she said quietly. "That's where we were. My team and I, and the other teams. Back when we thought that our little outpost in the mountains was the only human presence..." she sighed heavily. "How goddamned naive I was. We all were..."

"You're alive, Stratton's alive, that's what counts. And what you _do_ with it counts even more," Jack said.

Green seemed to snap out of her reverie. "Yeah, I guess so. Ugh, I really don't want to do this. But it's not like we have any choice. Come on, let's get started."

They left the base, the four of them, and began their long march.

Towards the Hell Keep.

Towards hope.


	31. EPISODE 01: The Hell Keep

The Hell Keep loomed ahead of them, a black monolithic sentinel that lorded over this region of Hell. The closer they got to it, the worse it looked. Those were definitely bloodfalls and that was definitely a blood moat, although as they drew within a hundred meters of the place, he saw that there was at least a natural land bridge across it. Although he wasn't happy to see the bulbous, floating shapes of some Cacodemons hovering lazily across the landscape of a courtyard in front of the Keep. And there were several Imps standing guard as well.

What were they guarding?

As they covered the final stretch of distance, feeling horribly exposed, he found himself wondering what they were supposed to be doing. What was their goal? The monsters he'd come across all seemed so...disorganized. It was too easy to get them to fight each other, and they never seemed to be _doing_ anything beyond killing and torturing people. Most of them seemed more like animals than creatures. Well, the Demons at least. The Imps seemed like they could grasp basic combat tactics, and there was a cruel, if simple, kind of intelligence in their gaze. The Cacodemons and Lost Souls? Who could say? The zombies were, well…

Zombies.

Except for the Barons of Hell, they all seemed like, at best, grunts. Where was the General? Where was the monster behind the invasion? Provided there even was one. But Jack was reluctant to dismiss this as a random occurrence. It was there, hidden in the horror, somewhere. But now wasn't the time to think about that, because they were coming up on the land bridge. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to hide, so they just straight up crossed the bridge, walking into the maw of bloody violence. Jack had his pistol out.

It was time to rock and roll.

Jack got things started off with a good, clean shot that punched right through the left eye of one of the nearest Imps, turning it into a bloody crater and dropping the thing in a second. The others all let out shrieks of rage and fury and began to thrown fireballs at them. The Cacodemons joined in, raining down death from above.

"Spread out!" Green called.

Jack strafed away, to the right, making sure he didn't get in anyone's line of fire. He aimed and squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, missing twice but putting a bullet straight into the mouth of another Imp and blowing out the back of its head like a ripe melon. He hissed in pain as a fireball seared past him, far too close for comfort, burning his cheek. No armor here. Had to be careful. The combat armor had made him careless. Jack turned, aimed and fired, popping another head and dropping another Imp.

Suddenly, the Imp he was aiming at stumbled forward and he held fire, realizing what had happened: a Cacodemon had accidentally shot the Imp. The reaction was great. The spiny red thing spun around, hissed and threw a fireball at the Cacodemon, which promptly returned fire. "Hold fire!" Jack screamed as other Imps joined in the sudden new battle, and the other two Cacodemons joined their brother.

The others stopped firing, as the creatures had become entirely engrossed in their new battle. They fell back and watched the whole display continue until, in the end, there was exactly one Cacodemon left, and it wasn't in good condition. Three barrages of bullets converged on it and popped the bleeding thing, and then all fell silent.

"Damn," Green said. "Always weird to see that."

"But very pleasant," Stratton said.

"Yep. Let's get inside," Jack replied, jogging across the courtyard towards the structure itself. The 'courtyard' that sat in front of the immense stone and metal structure was mostly barren, though Jack spied a collection of what seemed to be low stone buildings off to the right. Might be a good idea to check those, and it became even more prudent when they reached the front door and found it locked down tight.

"What the hell?" Jennifer muttered, staring at the door.

It was metal, stamped with the UAC logo, trimmed in a strange red design. "This is so weird," Jack said. "It looks so...out of place."

"And it's locked," Green said. She sighed. "Well, let's hope there's a red keycard somewhere around here. Let's search those structures."

They moved across the desolate courtyard, stepping over corpses and through pools of blood and gore, and came to the three low structures. They reminded Jack of storage sheds, and when he stepped in through one of the open-faced doors, he saw that apparently, they'd reminded the UAC of them as well. Or at least that's what they were using them for. They searched each of the small structures, finding little more than bland silver crates that were mostly packed with spare parts for all kinds of scientific equipment.

In the third one, they found a severed hand clutching...something red.

"Is that...what _is_ that?" Jack asked, crouching. He peeled the pale, stiff fingers one by one, revealing what appeared to be a red keycard done up in the style of a skull. "Did _we_ make this? Or was this already here?"

"No idea," Green replied. "Doesn't really matter."

"I guess not," Jack murmured, passing her the card.

They returned to the door and she slotted the card. There was a sharp buzz and then the door slid open, disappearing into its niche. Jack slowly moved into the large room beyond, covering a portion of it with his pistol, sweeping left and right.

"Whoa," he whispered.

The place looked like a slaughterhouse, but not just humans this time. There were a good two dozen Imps, Demons and zombies butchered.

"Think they tore each other up?" Stratton asked.

Green shook her head. "No, look, too many headshots. This was one of ours."

"God, I hope whoever they are, they're still alive," Jack said. "We could sure as hell use the backup."

"Yep," Green said. She looked around the room. It was home to, besides the bodies, a few workstations that had been shredded by gunfire and fireballs. "Okay, this is how we're going to do this. Sweep and clear through the whole facility. It looks like it's three levels. Keep an eye out for armor, weapons, radios, anything useful. Once you clear your section of the first floor, we meet back here. Questions?"

There were none.

She nodded sharply. "Then let's get to it."

She and Stratton broke left, he and Jennifer took the right. They moved through another doorway, coming to a broad but low corridor. They were quiet at first, checking out the side rooms one by one. They were mostly empty, mainly bunk rooms. There were several corpses that had been mutilated beyond the point of use, either for zombification or anything else that demons did with dead bodies. Jack didn't want to think about it.

"God, can you imagine sleeping here?" Jennifer muttered.

Jack shook his head. "Honestly not, and I've slept in some pretty shitty places."

They swept the bunk rooms, finding nothing of use. The place had been picked over thoroughly. Beyond the corridor lay another room constructed, apparently at random, of metal and stone plates. There were more bodies, and lying among the corpses and blood was something absolutely beautiful. "That's mine," Jennifer said, moving past him.

He sighed, but before he could even respond, she grabbed the shotgun and turned to look at him. "You got it last time," she said.

"Fine, fair enough. But that means you get point," he replied.

"Fair enough," she agreed.

There were three ways out of the room. Two were dead ends, home to just a few zombies milling around that went down easily enough. Jack managed to snag another magazine for his pistol, to replace the one he'd spent outside, taking down the Imps and Cacodemons. One room was a makeshift galley and another was a storage room. They would have looked generic, except for the fact that some of the walls were covered in that awful creeping ivy and, in the galley, there were several torsos hanging from chains, still dripping blood, ragged shreds of flesh hanging with ropy lengths of intestines. They left the galley quickly.

The only way left to go led to an uncomfortably narrow corridor that had several other alcoves leading off of it.

"Great," Jennifer muttered. "This'll be fun."

True to her word, she took point, shotgun at ready. She only had eight shells. He hoped it was going to be enough. As they began making their way through the tight and narrow maze, Jack realized that whoever had been living here hadn't liked it either: there was basically nothing in here. He wondered if this had been punishment duty: piss off the CO, go patrol the maze. It would be good incentive to not act up.

Progress was slow and painful, like a migraine.

Every time Jack turned a corner, he expected something to be waiting for him, some new horror, or even an old one. But the minutes bled by and there was nothing. Just blank wall after blank wall, dead end corridors, low ceilings. And then, suddenly, they reached a dead end. And there was nothing for them to see.

Just a blank wall.

"What...why is this even here?!" Jennifer growled.

"No idea, but at least we cleared it out," Jack replied. He turned around and as he began walking back the way they'd come, at least decently sure that he could remember the way back, he heard a sound: a door opening. From somewhere up ahead. On the heels of that noise was another, more ominous one: the meaty tread of a Demon, marching towards them.

"Oh shit," he whispered.

"Down! Now!" Jennifer snapped, and he got down just as a big, pink monstrosity walked around the corner. It issued a roar and began stomping towards them, and Jennifer responded in kind, putting a shotgun shell right into its big, gaping mouth. Blood and gore sprayed the area and the thing dropped with a heavy thud.

"You've gotta be shitting me," Jack groaned.

"Get behind me, let's get the hell outta here," Jennifer replied.

He got behind her, suddenly terrified. They had no armor, no way to call for backup, and pistols were worth about jack spit against these awful things. The two of them kept going, and they heard another door open up, and then another, and more. Followed by roars and the steady thumping of Demons coming for them.

God...fuck, this was a bad situation!

Jennifer disappeared around the corner and he heard a shotgun blast, saw the muzzle flare on the strange gritty metal walls, heard her fire again, and again, and again. He glanced behind them, well, at least there were no doors opening up back there. For now. Jack moved around the corner and joined her, finding her a few feet deeper down the low passageway. He was counting off the shells as she fired them.

She didn't have many left.

And there were more Demons, stomping over their dead brethren, heedless of them. Then, suddenly, she was out of ammo, the shotgun spent.

Jack raised his pistol. He saw two more. "Duck!" he screamed.

Jennifer dropped smoothly into a crouch, abandoning the shotgun and pulling the pistol from its holster in one tight motion, and then they were both firing. The sound was awful in the close quarters, but no time to worry about that. He squeezed the trigger, his body as stock still as he could manage it, his aim dead on, given that it was hard to miss these assholes. He popped off the rounds as quickly and accurately as he could, aiming for the big mouth, since it was the easiest target. Seven rounds from him and six from Jennifer put down the first Demon. He began to get desperate as the other waded through the corpses, coming straight at them.

As both of them exhausted their current magazines, it finally dropped dead, barely three feet in front of Jennifer.

"Shit," she whispered, breathing heavily. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

"Seconded," Jack replied, shaking so badly he nearly dropped his magazine as he ejected the spent one and slapped a fresh one in.

They hurried over the bodies and, thankfully, ran into no other enemies. In just a few minutes, they'd made it back to the start point. Distantly, they could hear gunfire, though it didn't sound desperate, it sounded measured and controlled. He hoped that Green and Stratton were handling themselves and resisted the urge to run off after them. Green had been clear: stay there once they got back to the lobby.

"That was too close," Jennifer said, and he saw her looking down at the gore stains on her uniform. He knew how she felt.

"Yeah...but hey, we made it," he replied, trying for a light tone and failing spectacularly.

"I didn't expect that at all. I mean...at _all._ Everything has been pretty straightforward so far, but those assholes were _hiding_ from us, or were hidden. This is getting worse. I'm...worried," she said, looking at him.

"I've been worried since my boots touched dirt on Mars," Jack replied.

She shook her head. "No, I mean, really worried. How long can we keep going like this? This situation just keeps getting more and more dangerous, and-"

"Jennifer," he said, cutting her off. Her gaze had begun to drift, but now she snapped it back to him. He looked her in the eyes. "Keep it simple," he said. "We sweep and clear wherever we go, we find more ammo, bigger guns, kick ass, and keep pushing."

"And that's it? It's that easy?" she asked.

He laughed. "That sounds easy?" he replied.

She laughed too, suddenly, loudly, the tension broken. He knew how she felt, and he knew that hopelessly was lurking in all of their brains, and that the strongest power of hopelessness was logic, reason and fact.

Because there was a very good chance that they were all going to die, and die horribly, in here. The odds against them were astronomical. The deck was stacked so heavily against them that the game was rigged. But…

But that didn't mean they should just lay down and die.

And all it took, sometimes, was for someone to remind you of that. Jack was sure he was going to need reminding pretty soon, because he felt close to a breakdown.

"I guess not, but we'll get it done, won't we?" she asked.

He nodded. "We'll get it done," he agreed.

Green and Stratton came back at that point. They hadn't had much luck on their end, either, but they'd at least killed a bunch of Imps and had found the way up...and had some bad news to deliver. Bad news seemed to be the only thing not in short supply.

"We found the motorpool, but it's locked down. We need a blue keycard," Green explained as she led them deeper into the structure.

"Of course," Jack muttered.

"We'll find it. It's gotta be somewhere upstairs," she said, and he hoped she was right. They'd been lucky so far.

The four of them hurried through the dead corridors, found the stairs and went up. Jennifer warned them about the new tactics on the way. As they came up into the central antechamber for the second story, they found a reception party waiting for them. A dozen or so zombies were milling about, few of them armed, but more significantly, there were a trio of Lost Souls drifting about overhead. Prioritizing them, the group opened fire, taking up defensive positions as much as they could in the open area. Jack put three rounds into one of them and popped it, sprinkling down bits of bleached, singed bone onto the zombies' heads.

He dropped his aim as the others took out the remaining Lost Souls and got to work on the zombies. He punched holes in skulls, blew two eyes out and put a round through a roaring mouth before his pistol ran dry. As he reloaded, down to his last magazine now, he heard the familiar shrieking of Imps.

"Crap," he whispered, head-shotting another zombie and then twisting to the right, where the shrieks were coming from. A pair of Imps tore into the room and immediately began throwing fireballs at the squad. He kept his shots sparse, pulling the trigger only when he was sure he was going to connect, and for the most part he did good. He fired off twice, and got a lucky shot, hitting one of the Imps and tearing away a portion of its skull in a plume of dark red gore. The next shot went wide, and he cursed furiously, then made himself focus harder.

He put three rounds into the other Imp's chest. Not dead, but injured at least, and Jennifer finished it off with one to its neck and another to its dome. After that, he ended up using every last round in his pistol killing off the rest of the zombies and another Imp that arrived. As the last corpse fell, Jack immediately began hunting for the scattered pistols that he'd seen the zombies holding. Once he was sure it was safe, he hurried over to the nearest one, grabbed it and ejected the magazine. He and the others scavenged for ammo.

In the end, he managed to piece together one, whole single magazine.

Wow, what a fucking haul.

But it was better than his fist, at least. They took the first door they could, dead ahead, and finally caught a lucky break. Well, considering the way things had been going lately, it was a lucky break. The door led into the security center that the holographic projector had promised. The place was big, and impressive, or it would have been if it wasn't shredded to shit. Two of the walls were covered entirely in monitors and the other two were mostly taken up by high-tech workstations. Most of the monitors were broken, and those that weren't were dead.

The four of them spread out, searching the place over. They managed to find three good things: the first was more ammo, both for their pistols and the lone shotgun they had among them. Jack managed to get another two magazines in his pockets. Also among the debris, hidden away in a location that almost seemed intentional, were another two skull-keys: red and yellow. Jack wondered where the yellow one went, but thought he had a good idea. The third and final thing they found was a surprisingly intact PDA.

Jack checked it over and found a single file on it, a video recording.

"Hey guys...come here," he said as he checked it out. "It says this was recorded after the event happened."

They crowded around and watched as he fired up the file. The screen booted up, then cleared to show the haggard, pale face of a man. A Marine. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his hair sticking up in several different directions, and there was a nasty cut down one cheek. He looked off screen for a moment, then returned his attention to it.

They could hear others, talking in the background, and Jack realized that this had been shot in this very room.

" _This is Corporal Adam Watts, Hades Squad. If you're watching this...then you probably know a whole hell of a lot more than I do. I'll give you the basics: shit is fucked, my Sergeant and half the squad is dead, and there are monsters everywhere. But we've got a plan of action. Hacked this place's intel, learned quite a bit. In case you're trapped here, don't worry. Well, okay, worry, but there's a way out. At least, there's supposed to be. Find a map of this region, you're going to want to get to the Slough of Despair, from there you can teleport between the structures until you hit the Tower of Babel, from there, you can teleport back to Mars City. That's what me and the survivors are doing right now, we're gearing up._

" _We found an armory and a motorpool, left a few toys up in the armory, and we're gonna leave a vehicle in the pool. Gonna have to fix both of them, but we could use the break, honestly. As of right now, my squad consists of Corporal Fletcher, Lance Corporals Bryant and Wong, and Private Davis. We can't wait for you, but it's gonna be slow going, so maybe you can catch up with us...fuck, who's gonna see this anyway?"_

The vid log cut off abruptly.

"Well...shit," Jack said.

"How long ago was this?" Green asked.

"If this PDA's chronometer is accurate...almost a day," Jack replied.

"Shit. Well, come on, now we've got even more incentive to haul ass. Let's pick it up, people!" Green said, turning on her heel and marching out of the room. The others quickly followed her. From there, it was a simple matter to finish checking out the area. They picked off a handful of zombies and Imps hanging out on the second and third floor. Getting into the armory with the yellow key, Jack discovered what they'd left behind.

"What the hell is this?" he asked as he pulled the weird, bulky, long-barreled black and gold weapon from its glass case. "I mean...seriously, what is this?"

"I've heard of this," Green said, studying it. "It's a plasma rifle. If I recall correctly, its official name is the UAC Zero One Plasma Rifle."

"You want it?" he asked.

"You keep it. You can...field test it," she replied, grinning.

He laughed. "I'll get right on it." He looked around for more ammo for it, but he didn't see anything, so he just slung it. They ended up finding another shotgun, which Green took, and a pair of SMGs, that he and Stratton took, and a decent amount of ammo for them. From there, they retraced their route back down to the motorpool, unlocked it and discovered that there was indeed an armored ATV waiting for them.

It even had a minigun.

"I'll drive," Green said as she opened up the driver's side door.

"And I call minigun duty," Jennifer said, staring at the huge, mounted silver gun. Jack and Stratton followed her in, Stratton sitting up front, next to Green, Jack taking the back seat to himself while Jennifer got up into the domed top housing the minigun. The ATV fired up as soon as Green tried it, then she opened up the garage door and a hellish red light spilled into the motorpool. Wordlessly, they drove out, back into the fires.

Towards the Slough of Despair, this time.


	32. EPISODE 01: Slough of Despair

For the first five or so minutes, they rode in silence.

Jack stared out over the miserable hellish wastelands that surrounded them, unable to keep his attention inboard. It was just so...bizarre. So other. Mainly it was that crimson sky that was doing it. And the strange rock formations they were passing every now and then. They were basically granite boulders, or they appeared to be granite, but they also had these weird, shimmering red and blue veins growing along them.

And he could swear he saw what looked like red coral out there, growing straight up out of the rock and black sand ground.

Green was the first to break the silence.

"So I was wondering if maybe we should all talk about how we got here," she said. Jack looked back inside, at her, ahead of him in the driver's seat. "I mean, we're all here for a reason. We all fucked up. We all did something."

A beat of silence passed.

"Guess I'll go first," Green said. "It's really embarrassing, so I'm sure it'll make all of you feel better. I got drunk."

"What?" Jack asked, the word coming out of him before he realized he was going to say it.

Green chuckled. "Yep. Drunk. About a year and a half ago I was on duty over in...shit, I can't remember. Estonia, Czechoslovakia, somewhere around there. The region was hot with local 'freedom fighters' who were really just anarchist assholes looking to loot, pillage and plunder anything and everything they could. But it had been quiet for close to a week around my fire base. And I just...needed a fucking break. I thought I was going to snap. I'd been tense for so long, and I'd just received news that my husband was tired of waiting for me, as I'd been stop-lossed fucking three times in a row. So...yeah, it was a bad time. I'd just signed the divorce papers digitally and I knew I was going to freak out if I didn't do _something._

"So I got drunk. And ended up, uh, accidentally shooting the munitions reserve. Most of it was stable stuff, but enough of it was unstable that it blew a good sized hole through the munitions building. No one was hurt, thank God, and there were no real repercussions, but at that point they really didn't know what to do with me. They didn't want to get rid of me, but they could tell I was pretty messed up, emotionally, and I was liable to do something stupid like that again. So they had to put me somewhere else. Really, it was bad press. That's all they care about now: press. The public eye. So I got rotated up here, to Mars," she explained.

"I got half my squad killed because of a bad call," Jennifer said after a moment, and her tone indicated that that was all she was going to say about it.

"Oh...I'm sorry," Green replied.

"Yeah, me too."

Green looked in the rearview, her eyes meeting Jack's briefly. He sighed. "I was ordered to fire on a building that we thought held some insurgents. I was doing some scouting, saw civilians in the building, lots of them. Tried to report it, but my superior didn't care. I disobeyed orders, went in there, found nothing but civvies. No guns between them. Nothing. We would've bombed forty innocents just trying to hide into oblivion, but my superior didn't care. All he saw was that I made him look bad, and he had a lot of pull. Dad was a Senator, uncle a General. He squawked until they decided to do something, sent me up here."

"Damn, that sucks," Green muttered.

"Yep. Especially considering what happened...what about you, Stratton?" Jack asked.

"Nothing too special," he replied. "Got into a fight with my superior over something stupid. Fist fight. He was an ass and he was riding all of us over every little goddamned thing. You know how some guys can get. I just...snapped one day. Landed me out here." He shrugged. "But I'm not entirely sure I regret it."

"How do you mean?" Jennifer asked.

"Well, before, it was all just bullshit, you know? We were all fighting these endless little wars. Fight cause the politicians or the corporations or the bureaucrats told us to. It was a waste, just a huge waste, of time, of resources, and mainly of life. We were all killing each other over nothing. But up here, these demons, these freaking monsters? _That's_ evil. _That's_ something worth laying your life on the line for. _That's_ something worth fighting for, worth killing for, worth dying for. It feels like were doing something that _matters_ for once in our long, stupid, bloody history."

"I know exactly how you feel, Stratton," Jack said.

"Same," Jennifer said.

"Yeah, I hear you there. At least we have a very clear-cut goal here. No ambiguity, no uncertainty, no moralizing. Just kill, kill and kill some more, because these things are pure fucking evil," Green said.

They drove on.

It didn't take much longer to reach the Slough of Despair. Jack didn't even know what a slough was, though he didn't like the sound of it. And he didn't like what he saw, either. Dead ahead were two big walls made of black rock with shining red veins running through it. These walls, parted in the middle, were a good thirty or forty feet tall.

"Get ready, I'm taking us in," Green said.

So far, they could see nothing, but that didn't mean there wasn't anything there. And the way beyond the walls was a blind spot, since there was another wall almost directly in front of it. Jack and Stratton slotted their weapons through the openings in the sides of the ATV and Jennifer spun up the minigun. The ATV moved slowly through the opening, coming into a small ingress. There was just enough room to turn, either left or right, to get around the wall dead ahead of them. It seemed to be a pillar of some kind.

Jack had his SMG ready for action, trying to see if there was any movement out there. They made their way into another courtyard beyond, it being beset on all sides by more of those obsidian sheers. Jack spotted three openings, one dead ahead and one to either side, as well as the vague makings of what might have once been a simple research camp.

And then, suddenly, seemingly from everywhere at once, the hordes of Hell attacked.

Demons, Imps and Z-Sec zombies spilled in from the three openings, and from overhead, a small flotilla of Lost Souls and Cacodemons descended.

"Fire! Fire!" Green shouted, and above them, the minigun roared life, spewing out a stream of red hot metal death as Jennifer brought it around them in a slow arc. As Jack opened fire, putting a few through through a pair of Imp skulls, he saw a trio of Z-Secs get turned into so much free-flying chewed up meat by the minigun. A Demon went down next, most of its skull blown away onto the wall behind it, then she was firing somewhere else and it was back to him. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, but there were too many of them.

There had to be a couple of dozen Demons alone, and they were the ones that bull-rushed the ATV. Jack emptied his submachine gun trying to keep the Demons from getting up to the vehicle, but only managed to put down a half dozen of them before the rest smashed into the vehicle. It began shaking violently and he could hear the rending of metal.

"Get them off of us!" Stratton called.

"Hold on!" Jennifer replied, and suddenly Jack heard the unmistakable sound of the hatch for the minigun housing being opened. "Fire in the hole!" she called, and then slammed it shut. Jack barely had time to prepare himself before a pair of tremendous explosions rocked the ATV so hard that he thought it was going to blow up. All the while, he heard more gunfire from the minigun and glanced up, managing to catch a glimpse of two Cacodemons being shredded. All at once, the minigun fell silent, and it became dead quiet.

"That was risky," Green said finally.

"That's life at the moment," Jennifer replied.

"I suppose it is, any survivors?"

They looked out through the windows, now smeared with blood and ash, as saw just a handful of Imps and Z-Secs limping around, most of them blinded. Jennifer took the opportunity to put them down with bursts from the minigun. After waiting a bit longer, they all exited the vehicle. When Jack tried to open his door, it simply fell off the frame of the vehicle and onto a pile of Demon corpses. He laughed despite himself.

The four of them exited the ruined vehicle and began moving among a sea of corpses and freshly spilled monster blood.

"Secure the area, I'll get the structure," Green said.

They responded affirmatively and split up. Jack moved across the dead bodies, making sure they were really dead bodies, and paused to pilfer the Z-Sec corpses. They were poorly equipped, and between the grenades and the minigun, most of their gear had been ruined, but he at least managed to snag a pair of magazines for the SMG. It was a good, sturdy weapon, though he missed his pump action shotgun.

He checked out the left passageway, saw it snaking away from him and then turning, disappearing out of sight. No hostiles, for the moment at least. He finished his sweep of the perimeter and met back up with the others as they did as well, regrouping at the structure Green was checking out. It was a really basic command center, he saw as he stepped inside. Little more than an entryway, really. And although it looked like it had gone through a tornado, Green had managed to locate one single good thing among the wreckage.

A map.

"There's three main tunnels," she said, studying it. "Here, off to the left, is bunks and infirmary. Stratton and I will check there for survivors, emergency medical supplies, etcetera. Right is the armory and security center, Ward, you and Taylor get there, grab anything you can. We meet back here in half an hour, then tackle the final passageway, which leads to the teleporter. And then we figure out how to handle that. Got it?"

Jack nodded. He was glad she was here, doling out orders. On the surface, it was easy work, because, when nothing went wrong, it was relatively easy. Or simple, at least. It was when shit went wrong that suddenly everyone's looking to you, the leader, to fix it or, at worst, pay for it, because _you_ were the one that was giving the orders. Leadership was often nothing more than a scapegoat for people to blame when shit went wrong.

Because human beings _needed_ someone to blame, even if there was no blame.

They split up, him with his SMG, Jennifer with her shotgun, and the two of them made their way down the right tunnel, delving into the black and red rocks.

"So, you seemed like you were having fun up there," Jack said.

Jennifer laughed. "Yeah. I never get to use those things. They're fucking awesome."

"That they are," Jack replied. It felt good to laugh, to feel elated, even over something so small. That encounter had been a close call, but it felt like a badass win, and everything thing that helped boost morale was now a crucial, precious resource. Which they really needed right now, because they were headed into a maze of dark rock and horror. Jack led the way this time, heading to the end of the initial pathway and breaking left. He was at least grateful it wasn't really a maze, all they had to do was follow the main path and it would eventually take them to their destination. The problem was that there were a lot of alcoves and offshoots.

He recalled the last maze he was in and hoped not to have a repeat.

At least there was a lot more room to maneuver here.

Jack felt the tension begin to mount yet again as he moved through the rock maze. Distantly, and sometimes too close for comfort, he could hear something growl, or roar. And he heard that distinctive strange gurgling-clicking sound of the Imps. He hated that sound. Their progress slowed as they had to stop and check every alcove. Most of them dead-ended in nothing, but sometimes there was a lonely corpse of a dead Space Marine or scientist. They didn't see anyone or anything until they reached the final stretch of passageway.

As soon as they stepped into it, it was like they breached some silent alarm. A general roar of fury went up and two dozen Demons and Imps spilled into the area from a string of side passageways. Jack cursed sharply and opened fire, hosing the first wave of enemies down with his SMG. "Got any more grenades?!" he shouted as his first magazine ran dry and he slapped a fresh one in. "Cause I'm not sure what else to do!"

"No! Pure luck I found those!" Jennifer called back over the roar of the encroaching horde of monsters and their gunfire.

Jack emptied his SMG and let it hang, his mind working furiously. They'd only put down maybe a third of the things and there were a shit-ton of Demons stomping towards them. His hand fell to the Plasma Rifle he'd found earlier.

Well, time for a field test.

It was built just like any other gun, so Jack aimed, warning Jennifer to get back, and squeezed the trigger. Brilliant blue-white balls of what seemed to be pure energy began rapidly pumping out of the end of the long-barreled weapon. Realizing how rapid fire it was, Jack quickly began to move the barrel in arcs, swinging it back and forth slowly, hitting the creatures with the balls of plasma. "Hell yeah!" he screamed as he saw the effect it was having. The things were being destroyed by the energy, stopped dead in their tracks.

After several seconds he let go of the trigger, realizing that he had no way to reload this, at least not yet, and figuring they might need it later. Once he did that, he and Jennifer finished off the stragglers with pistol rounds.

"That thing is amazing," Jennifer said. "I really need one of those."

"I've got to find more ammo for it," Jack replied, studying a small bar of what he realized was energy remaining. It was a little over halfway depleted. Well, now at least he had a better understanding of what it was capable of.

No more demonic beasts showed up and Jack figured they'd finished off their local supply. Or hoped, at least. They managed to hit the end of the maze and found exactly what they were looking for: a basic rectangular structure. It was at least bigger than the one by the entrance. They hurried into it, finding about what they'd expected to find. A lot of dead bodies, a lot of blood, a lot of sparking, broken equipment.

But the armory at the back of the room, though depleted, wasn't totally emptied out. Besides finding a stash of magazines and shells, and a pair of fragmentation grenades, (Jack took one for himself, he hadn't even _seen_ these things before now, he was beginning to wonder if they even had them up there), they made a big discovery.

"Armor!" he cried as he pried open one of the crates.

"Not combat armor, but I guess it'll do," Jennifer said.

"It will definitely do."

They watched each other's back and took turns pulling on the standardized green security armor. It was the same make and model as the one he'd showed up on Phobos with. It was definitely a step down from combat armor, but it was a big step up a freaking uniform and skin. Once they were both suited up, they tested the comms link and found it functional.

"Well, that solves _that_ problem, at least," Jack said.

"Provided comms work the same way here," Jennifer replied.

"Here's hoping. Come on, there's another crate here with two more suits. We've got to get it back to the meeting area."

"Hooray, I was hoping to lug heavy ass shit through enemy-infested territory," Jennifer muttered as she took one of the handles.

Jack grabbed the other and they began hurrying back.

They managed to get back without any further trouble, and didn't have to wait too long for Green and Stratton to show back up. The pair were thrilled with the discovery, and after they pulled on their suits of armor and did a radio check, the quartet of survivors pressed on with their journey, making their way slowly through the final portion of the maze.

Jack put his SMG to use, pumping round after round into the twenty or so zombies and Imps that were strung out along the length of the natural corridors. He found himself wondering about the teleportation process as they drew ever closer to the end of the Slough. On the one hand, he wanted to be done with this, wanted to make that next step, complete this part of his journey and get closer to the end, but he was also afraid.

What if something went wrong?

Faster than he probably would have liked, they found themselves at the teleportation device. There were all sorts of workstations set up in the small open area, no doubt there to study the pad itself. Now they were just as broken and bloodied as everything else in this awful dimension. As they approached, Jack studied the teleportation device itself. It was vastly different from the dark, bizarre construct he'd seen in Phobos Anomaly.

It was a simple square of metal that had a pentagram carved into the rust-colored material. Jack tried not to sigh, or shiver. More demon iconography. Was it coincidence? Or something more? Was this truly Hell? If it was, he had to admit, he wasn't all that impressed. Although he vastly preferred demons you could blow away with a shotgun, it seemed very strange considering what a big deal religions made of it.

"So...who goes first?" Jennifer asked.

"Should we draw straws?" Stratton replied.

"I'll go," Green said. "Give me a twenty second count, then I want Ward going next. I don't know how it works for sure, but I imagine if one of us is standing on the other end and another tries to teleport in, it'll be bad for both of us. So get off the pad as soon as you come through, you got that?" she asked.

They nodded.

Green sighed and stepped up. "Nothing venture, nothing gained," she murmured, and stepped onto the pad.

There was a burst of bright, neon green light and a strange whooshing sound and she popped out of existence.

Jack began counting, still trying to process what he had just seen. It looked insane, impossible. When the twenty count was up, he stepped forward.

As soon as his boot touched the plate, he was suddenly somewhere else.


	33. EPISODE 01: Pandemonium

The sensation was definitely different than whatever he remembered when going through the Phobos Anomaly...not that he remembered a great deal. It was over in a split second. There was a great whooshing sound that seemed to blow through him and a brilliant green light and then, abruptly, he was somewhere else.

And that other place was absolute pandemonium.

Green was shouting, firing, into a crowd of zombies, Imps and Demons in a large, open area. The details were lost as Jack raised his weapon and stumbled off of the red platform, spraying the general crowd with his SMG. He stitched a bloody line of fire across a quartet of zombies, spraying the crowd with blood, brains and bone fragments. He emptied the SMG, ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in.

His last one.

He opened fire again, simply trying to keep them at bay. By the time his second magazine was dry and his SMG was functionally useless, there was another bright flash of green light and then Jennifer was there. Jack shouted a warning as she hopped off the platform and pounded out a slug shell, blowing an Imp's head clean off.

Frustrated that he already had to use his special gun again, Jack let the SMG hang and snatched up the Plasma Rifle. Aiming at the biggest cluster of enemies, which was a clutch of about a dozen Demons and Imps dead ahead, he held down the trigger and began moving the gun back and forth in a tight arc. Brilliant blue-white balls of light lit up the area as they hosed the enemies down. The stench of burning meat filled the air as the balls of energy smacked into the exposed flesh of the monsters, immediately blackening and crisping even their tough hides. The Imps shrieked and the Demons roared as they went down.

There was another flash of green light, and then Stratton had joined them.

"Aw, shit!" he cried, adding his own gunfire to the mix.

Jack ended up emptying his Plasma Rifle, but it cleared out a little over half of the enemies in the immediate area. Soon, there were over twenty blackened, charred, smoking corpses littering the strange green marble floor. As soon as the gun was dry, he dropped it and yanked out his pistol, aiming and popping off enough shots to empty a magazine. When the last bullet was launched from its dark nest, it seemed they had finished off the horde they'd stepped into. Although, given the sounds they were hearing, the peace wouldn't last.

"Hurry up, find ammo," Green said.

Distantly, and not so distantly, they could hear growls, moans, shrieks and grunts. Some of them sounded just in the next room. Things only got worse as Jack quickly scavenged for ammo, patting down the ripped, bloodied, burned uniforms of the Space Marines and scientists and techs that had been transformed into the lumbering, walking dead. The room itself was horrible: a godforsaken amalgamation of UAC tech and architecture and hellish environs. He saw bland chromed walls stamped with the UAC logo, but among these were stylized grinning skulls with glowing red eyes. And, placed seemingly at random, were square holes covered by rusty iron bars. Behind these bars were piles of real human skulls.

Worst of all was that, in some places, instead of skulls, there were what appeared to be scrolling sections of flattened intestines.

"What the fuck is this place?" Jack whispered, pausing momentarily as he caught sight of that particular horror.

"Insanity, just don't think about it," Green replied.

Jack nodded slowly, forcing himself to return to his duty. He managed to piece together two magazines for his pistol and two for his SMG. Although his Plasma Rifle was tapped out, he at least had his D1X1 frag grenade in case of emergencies. Once he finished, he and the others gathered at the base of a broad stairwell that led up. Hellish red light seemed to bleed from it. It was the only obvious way to go.

"Onwards and upwards," Green muttered as she took the lead.

Jack followed behind her, with Jennifer and Stratton covering their backs, and hurried up the stairwell, which was made mostly of strange green brick. They hustled up it, Jack cresting the top barely after Green. The stairway opened up into a courtyard of granite flooring and more UAC materials for walls. The UAC stuff was really messing with him. It was bad enough they were in this hellish environment, but the juxtaposition of it with stuff he was used to seeing seemed to make it worse somehow, as if perverting it.

There were a few openings into the courtyard, the most obvious of which was the fact that it had no ceiling, and they saw that eternal crimson sky. And within seconds of them getting inside, a dozen Demons began stomping out. Cursing, Jack threw himself back into the fray, trying to line his shots up carefully, spraying bursts from the SMG into the gaping maw of the Demons as they came towards them with a mindless determination.

He put down one, saw another get a portion of its head blown off by a shotgun shell, watched a third go down under fire. They made short work of the Demons, forced to work fast in a bad situation, blowing the things away until the last one fell.

"We've got to keep moving," Jennifer said.

"There," Green replied, pointing to another, more narrow stairwell across the courtyard. They all hurried over to it.

It sounded like there were reinforcements on the way.

The next stairwell led to a tight corridor that made Jack's skin crawl. The walls were constructed of that same horrific pink flesh-and-bone he'd hoped to never see again. What was worse was the fact that the walls were barely three or four feet apart. He took point this time, SMG ready, just wanting to get through this, to keep going, to push on to the next teleporter and then do it all again, and again, and again until they were home.

If you looked at the big picture, it seemed impossible. Hell, putting your face up to the picture and just looking at where you were at right now was hard enough, but that's how you had to do it. Think about the whole thing and you would despair. Just focus on the here and now, and eventually this will just be a memory.

He'd gotten through so much so far. He'd killed his way across two entire moons and two areas in this hellish nightmare. There was a lot to go, but he'd already done so much, and even back then it seemed impossible. But he had made it. That's what counted. He hurried through the corridors, feeling his whole body tense up each time he came to a turn, because there could be anything around each corner.

After the fourth turn, he let out a scream as he heard a roar and actually saw the thing's breath fog his visor, and yet he couldn't see anything. But he knew what he was seeing. A Spectre. He aimed and fired dead in front of him, and gore splattered the walls. He was rewarded with a kill, and then another one as he emptied his SMG into a second Spectre and hastily reloaded. He waited a moment, then gave the all clear and pressed on.

He stopped when he found a stairwell heading down into what looked to be an utterly silver room. "Got a stairwell here."

"Ward, Taylor, check it out," Green replied.

"Affirmative."

Jack and Jennifer moved swiftly down the stairway. Jack came in first, finding an utterly bizarre rectangular room of brushed, highly reflective silver metal. All of it was silver: ceiling, floor, walls. Every last inch gleaming silver metal.

"What is _with_ this place?" he whispered. It was weird enough, but the hell stuff kind of...made sense? It made sense in the sense that it was insane, but it _fit_ with he thought of as hellish, or at least what he'd come to expect from this dimension. But then they'd throw in something utterly out of place, whoever 'they' were.

There was just a single object in the room.

"We'll need that, I'm sure," Jennifer said, retrieving the blue skull-key that was lying in the center of the room.

Jack expected something to happen as soon as she picked it up, some kind of negative reaction, a trap, _something_ , but there was nothing. She pocketed the key and they hurried back up the stairs. Once they'd reported what they'd found to Green, the quartet pressed on. The sounds of the damned were getting closer again. This place was a fucking madhouse. They couldn't seem to catch a break. As they hurried through the maze, the sounds of the damned grew louder, closer, coming up from behind them. Imps, Demons and Zombies.

Standard fare for this nightmare.

They kept going until they hit a dead-end. Well, not a total dead-end. They came to a big door, studded with skulls, painted in blood and trimmed with blue and silver. The sounds were getting louder. Jennifer slotted the skull-key as quick as she could and the door slid open. Jack caught sight of the room beyond, there was a lot of red, and then they were through. He spun around, facing the way they'd come, and saw a clutch of Imps, followed by a group of Demons, suddenly coming at them down the corridor, practically scrambling over each other. As soon as they were all through, they closed and re-locked the door.

"Oh shit, I hate this room," Stratton said.

Jack turned back around and finally got a good look at it. He immediately agreed with the man. Ahead of them was a simple path of rock extending through a pool of blood to either side of it. The walls all around them were bleeding. The four of them moved slowly across the rock path, hoping that they'd earned themselves at least a small reprieve. Jack was almost tapped out for SMG ammo yet again.

He'd hoped that at this point the ammo situation would be better, and yet here he was.

They managed to make it across the blood pond to another door at the other end, which was also of UAC design. It opened into what appeared to be a storage area in a typical UAC outpost. Unlike the other places, this one felt like a bastion, an eye in the bloody hurricane. It wasn't a particularly big room, and there were a lot of crates around.

"Secure the area," Green said, jogging forward into the room.

They took a few minutes to do just that, and found only one other exit. The monsters banged at the door they'd come through for just a few minutes before giving up and wandering off. They found nothing and no one in the storage bay.

"Come look what I found!" Jennifer called suddenly.

Jack moved across the room, which was mostly empty, taken up in one corner mainly by stacks of crates that, he discovered, formed a little maze. They followed it to its core and discovered Jennifer standing among the remains of a small encampment. They found several opened up crates, among them were some foldout chairs, a foldout table, tools, empty MREs, and guns and ammo. Several of the crates were marked for such.

"Watts and his team must've been through here," Stratton said.

"Here's a PDA," Jack said, spying one on the table among the debris. He grabbed it while the others began collecting up and inventorying their newfound treasure trove of guns and ammo. Jack fired it up.

" _Watts here."_ The man looked worse this time, exhausted, pale, his eyes bloodshot. There was a crack on his visor and a lot of blood on his helmet. Jack could hear others moving around. _"Not a lot to say really, to whoever the fuck is watching this. If anyone is. It's been pretty nonstop, especially since hitting this freaking nightmare. Lot of dead ends in this place."_ He hesitated, looked away, finally looked back. _"We lost Davis back near the beginning of this place. Lost Soul got him. Goddamnit."_ He paused again, then sighed heavily.

" _Resting for a bit. We've got no idea what the House of Pain holds for us, but it can't be good. God, what kind of an asshole thought up these names? Whatever, out."_

The file ended abruptly.

"Shit," Jack muttered.

"What was the time stamp?" Green asked.

"Uh...this was recorded about twenty one hours ago."

"Well...we're getting closer, at least. Fuck, I hope they're still alive," Green muttered.

Jack nodded.

"Okay, grab what you can, we press on in five minutes," Green said.

Jack took all of those five minutes to sit down. His lower back was killing him and his shoulders were sore as hell, and that wasn't even counting the fact that his feet were in a fair amount of pain, and his joints hurt, and he had about fifty minors bruises, scratches, aches, cuts, burns and scrapes. He felt like he was falling apart. The armor definitely helped him maintain the illusion that he could keep doing this forever.

It was an important illusion.

He managed to snag a full quartet of magazines for his SMG, another two for his pistol and, finally, he found another shotgun! He snagged it and the sixteen shells he found for it, loading it up, pocketing the spare shells and letting the SMG hang. It was a good gun, but it was nothing like a freaking shotgun. It certainly earned its nickname of Blaster. When the five minutes were up, Jack groaned as he hauled himself to his feet.

He was a Marine, had been for years, but damn, even he had his limits.

And he couldn't even joke that this was close to being over.

But he had to press on. And really, there was a hard truth to continuing, in whatever it was you were doing. There was no secret, like a lot of people thought, wanted or even hoped for. No, the truth was that the only way to go on...was to go on. You just _did_ it. So he just forced himself to get up and followed the others across the bay, to the door at the far end. He took point with his shotgun in hand as Green opened the door.

It opened up into another one of those rooms with a bridge across it, except that while the walls weren't bleeding here, there was a weird blue-green watery liquid in the pool below the bridge. He had no idea what it was, but there were skull and crossbones slapped all over the perimeter of the room, each one sporting the word **POISON** above them. Well, he might not know what it was, but he knew it was dangerous.

They crossed the bridge and passed through the next door, what Jack hoped would be the final damned door. He was already sick of the place known as Pandemonium. He felt relief and tentative hope enter him as he stepped beyond the threshold, into a huge stone room. There was a single red square of metal, a teleport pad, in the dead center of the room, which reminded Jack oddly of a coliseum or arena of some kind. That was unsettling, but there was the damned teleporter! They were done with this place!

"Let's get the hell outta here," he said, making for the pad.

"Ward, wait-" Green began, and then there was a brilliant flash of green light.

A Baron of Hell popped into existence, stepping off of the pad. Jack screamed something, he wasn't sure what, but he shouldered the shotgun and managed to pump out two slug shells, both of them hitting the thing in its broad, muscular chest and opening up gory holes, before it threw a ball of green plasma right at him, roaring furiously. He managed to avoid a head-on collusion, but it winged him, hitting his shoulder hard enough to send him both flying and spinning. The shotgun was thrown from his grasp.

He screamed, feeling the immense heat of the pure energy even through his armor, knowing he was getting burned in some capacity but not knowing what to do about it as he hit the floor and rolled several times. The others were opening fire now, hosing the thing down. Gritting his teeth, Jack grabbed his SMG and rolled over, back towards it. From his prone position, he opened fire, aiming for its head, his eyes blurry with tears of pain. He emptied the magazine and managed to land maybe a third of the shots.

Ejecting the spent mag, he screamed as lances of burning agony shot through him when he tried to reload. It was a bitch, but he got a fresh magazine slapped in and took aim again. By the time he did, however, the other three had managed to topple the great beast. With a resounding roar, it crashed to the stonework floor, spilling its awful, deep red blood everywhere. As it did, the other three hurried towards him.

"Shit, Jack, are you okay?" Jennifer asked as she crouched by him.

"Shoulder," he moaned.

"Shh...hold still."

"Don't move," Green said. She took off his helmet carefully, then she, with great trepidation, pulled off the shoulder section of his armor. He bit back a scream as she did, feeling some of his skin, which was definitely burned, come away with it.

"Aw damn..." Stratton muttered.

"Watch our backs," Green said as she pulled a medikit from her belt and cracked it open. "Don't worry, Jack, I've got this," she murmured quietly. Jennifer took his other hand and he squeezed as Green stuck him with a combination painkiller/stimulant and injected him. Then she did it again with another combo of antibiotic and anti-viral cocktail. With that out of the way, she began carefully pulling away the burned remains of his uniform. He groaned sickly, but the medication was already taking effect.

Within a few minutes, she had the pieces of his uniform that had partially melted into his skull mostly taken away, had the wound cleaned and, after spraying on some artificial skin that was also mixed with a local anesthetic, she bandaged it, then reapplied the shoulder piece and got his helmet back on.

"Okay?" she asked.

Slowly, painfully, he moved his arm. "It'll have to do," he replied.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Come on, we've got to keep going."

He nodded. There was no time to rest, no rest for the good guys, only the press of time and the ever closing demon things.

Again, Green took point, and disappeared in a flash of green light as she stepped onto the pad. Counting off, Jack then did the same.

Time to go to the House of Pain.

He felt like he was already there.


	34. EPISODE 01: House of Pain

This time, when he snapped back into existence, he wasn't knee-deep in the shit.

Jack stepped off the red pad, shotgun in hand, but saw that Green had already secured the area. They had appeared in an octagonal stonework chamber. There was evidence that the UAC had been here at once point. He spied a few foldout tables and chairs, a shredded and sparking workstation, and a lotta blood. There was just one door in the room, a wooden door with metal bars built into it. It looked weirdly medieval.

"This place is utterly insane," Green said as he moved to join her. She was poking through the remains of the workstation. "I mean...it's all so inconsistent. Some sections are…I guess you could call them 'natural'. The stone, mostly. But then there's like...the weird green brick, the iron bars, the strange wood. Sometimes it seems like they built it. And then there's the UAC crap. And then there's stuff that I don't even...I don't get it at all. Like those rocks with the glowing red or blue veins. The coral formations. Those vines. Shit, I don't know. I hate thinking about it. It feels like..." She hesitated, seemed to gather her thoughts.

"Like what?" he asked. The others had teleported in.

"There's this thing in video games I used play when I was a kid. They all had different names, but basically it boiled down to an insanity meter. I always thought that was bullshit, but...I don't know, I feel like I'm slowly losing my mind. It's harder to focus and keep my thoughts, and sometimes there's weird thoughts in my head, almost like they aren't my thoughts..." She realized that they were all focused on her now.

She sighed and shook her head. "Just ignore me."

"No, I know what you mean," Jennifer said and Stratton nodded.

"Well, that's good to know at least."

Jack felt like he was close to cracking, but he wasn't sure if he was actually going crazy. Well, beyond the parts where he raged out and saw red. He was glad he hadn't been experiencing that recently.

"We all ready? I'd like to get through this miserable fucking shitpile of a place as fast as humanly possible," Green said.

They all nodded. Jack found himself getting a little worried. Green seemed to be letting herself go more now, when before she'd been pretty good at keeping everything about herself in check. Was she cracking up? Honestly, he'd be surprised if she wasn't. He was actually impressed that they were all doing as well as they were. But it didn't matter. Circumstances didn't really matter. What mattered was how well they held up, despite all the odds. Even if they were doing pretty well, all things considered, this place didn't care.

The demons wouldn't stop just because they were impressed with their resolve of perseverance or bravery. They'd keep coming whether or not they were at the top of their game or coming apart at the seams. So they had to just keep going regardless. The four of them gathered at the only exit in the room and tried to prepare themselves for whatever lay beyond. And it didn't sound good. He could hear moaning, and not the kind that came from zombies, but rather the kind that came from someone in pain. Bad pain.

Jack took point, moving up a broad stairwell of ugly red brickwork. As he crested the top, he hesitated, really not wanting to go into the next section of this hellish structure. For a number of reasons it made his stomach churn. Although he'd grown used to the awful scents in this wretched place, but the reek of blood and slowly rotting meat and exposed guts suddenly became overwhelming. The walls were still made of that same bland gray stonework, but the floor _and_ the ceiling was constructed of hard-packed intestines.

And hanging from the ceiling, from rusty chains and hooks, were several more UAC personnel. And they weren't strung up by their arms this time. Because they didn't have arms. Or legs. They were just heads and limbless torsos. The hooks had been jammed through their skulls. Each of the bodies swayed slowly back and forth, dripping blood, as if caught in a light breeze. Jagged points had burst from foreheads or noses or eyes, wherever the hook had been jabbed in. Some of them had foamy red-and-purple entrails hanging from their torsos.

Jack felt his stomach twitch, but somehow managed to keep it, and himself, under control. Instead, he just focused on the door at the other end of the chamber and began crossing, unconsciously keeping a distance from the hanging remains. There was nothing they could do for these people now. He managed to make it to the other doorway without looking up. Honestly, it wasn't a whole lot better. Leading away from the doorway was what appeared to be an asphalt pathway. To either side of it were pools of blood.

There were crude demonic faces craved into the stone walls and out of their mouths poured more blood, feeding into the pools. Still no enemies, but they were closer to the sounds of suffering. And now he could hear growls and that strange gurgle-clicking noise. Imps. Great. He fucking hated Imps. Holding his shotgun tightly, he hurried across the asphalt pathway. The others followed silently behind him, keeping pace.

The other end led to a stairway going up. Jack moved quickly up it, wanting to get out of here. On the other hand, he really didn't want to see what was up ahead, because it was starting to sound really bad. What was worse, his shoulder was really aching. Gritting his teeth, trying to tell himself just to suck it up and get over it, Jack came to the top of the next stairwell and found himself at the end of a broad stone room.

Immediately, he could see several tall, long corridors snaking away in several directions and, unfortunately, a lot of Imps, Demons and Z-Secs around. Funneling his anger and pain and fear into a focus on keeping himself alive, he shouldered the SMG and sprayed out a slew of bullets, shredding away most of the head of an Imp in a dark plume of pulpy red gore. That got things started off. The others hurried up the stairs to join him as a general din of roaring, screaming fury went up, the collection of two dozen or so hostiles noticing them.

Gunshots rang out as the battle got underway. At this point, it was really just a series of actions to Jack. He imagined the others felt mostly the same. It got that way in sustained combat, although because this was so freaking unreal maybe it felt even more like that. Almost like a damned video game. Aim the SMG, squeezed the trigger, throw three or four rounds into the big, dark screaming maw of an Imp and watch the back of its head blow out in a spray of gore. Switch targets, put down another Imp with a shot to the right eye that turned it into a cratered bloody socket. Switch again, shatter the black visor of a Z-Sec, killing it.

They were getting good at this.

They cleaned up the main room and the stragglers that came in from the corridors inside of two minutes and as the last body fell, a bullet-riddled Demon, the sound of reloading filled the air. Jack waited until he was sure it was clear, at least for now, and set to work replenishing his stocks from the Z-Secs he'd put down.

The sound of the suffering was closer now.

"We're going to have to check that out, aren't we?" he asked, staring down the left-most corridor. That seemed to be where the moans and screamers were coming from.

"We have to," Green replied. "If someone's alive..."

"Yeah, we can let them just suffer," Jack muttered. It wouldn't be right. He wasn't going to let someone suffer like that because he wasn't sure he could stomach seeing another mutilated human corpse. Part of him was becoming desensitized to the blood and the corpses and the spilled guts and exposed bones.

He'd seen more gore and dead bodies here than his entire career, his entire _life_ up to this point, three times over.

And Jack Ward had seen a lot of combat.

But there was another part of him that felt like every fresh body he saw was another small stone placed on a wooden board that was balanced on two cinderblocks. Eventually, there was going to be so much weight that the board would snap in half, and...he wasn't sure what would happen then. Maybe his sanity would slide slowly into the yawning black abyss of madness that every human held tucked into the darker recesses of their minds. Or maybe he'd just shut down, go catatonic. He'd seen it before. Or maybe he'd kill himself, or laugh and scream himself, his very mind, away. He didn't want to think about that, but...well, it seemed dangerous not to.

He had to armor himself against these possibilities as much as possible, and admitting them, admitting that they _were_ possibilities, was the foundation of that armor. Jack roused himself from thought as they head down the left corridor. It was the first of five. One of them had to lead to the way out. Well...hopefully.

A dead-end was always a possibility.

He wasn't sure what they would do then.

As they traversed the long corridor, which was just a broad, tall, straight path of stonework, appealing in its own way, he began to see something at its end. It was not at all appealing. It seemed to be a rectangular section of the wall that was simply cut out, a window without glass that gave a view into a room beyond.

And things were moving in that room, in plain view of the window.

But there was something wrong with the movements. Except he couldn't tell _what_ was wrong. But as he drew closer, he became more and more disturbed, his stomach twisting itself into acid-drenched knots, a feeling of cold dread worming its way through his whole body. He saw that there were two more windows, one to either side in the left and right walls near the end of the stone tunnel. The screams were very clear now.

And then, all at once, he saw.

It was like the end of the tunnel slid into focus, or maybe his mind abruptly gave up any attempts to protect him from the horrors he was seeing.

They were people.

They were human beings, chained up to the walls.

Some of them had been skinned alive. Others had been impaled. Some had had their eyes cut out. Some had no legs, others had their stomach slit open, their intestines hanging out like bundles of thick, ropy cables of meat. There was blood everywhere. There were a good twenty or so of them, to the left, to the right, dead ahead. They were chained by their wrists to the stonework walls. Beneath them were pools of blood and near the center of the room, about halfway between the window and the walls where the damned hung, was a tarnished, bronze alter, one for each section. On top of each: a still-beating human heart.

The worst part of all of this was that some of them were still alive, alive and screaming, twisting, writhing, their wrists bloody from the rusty chains that bound them. Jack didn't hesitate as he shouldered his SMG, aimed and fired at a naked man who had no legs, his guts strung out beneath him, swaying as he twitched and shuddered and moaned. He put one round into his forehead. The man shuddered once more and was still.

Behind him, he heard the others taking care of business in grim silence.

He mercy-killed three more people and then, after a seconds' thought, put a round through the still-beating heart.

After that, after making sure they were dead, and the hearts were destroyed, it was kind of a forgetful haze of sick anger. They made their way down each of the stone tunnels. Three of them dead-ended in a similar fashion. They killed monsters where they found them, battling an uncertain cavalcade of Imps, Demons, zombies and, a few times, Cacodemons. They killed tortured survivors wherever the found them, as they didn't find a single person who they could conceivably rescue. In fact, most of the people they found, Jack had no idea how they were even still alive. He now knew why it was called the House of Pain.

After clearing out that level, they found another stairwell that led up yet again. This time they emerged in another UAC section. This one had a more coherent feeling, not that totally random abstraction that other areas in this nightmare had. He got the impression that the UAC personnel had been attempting to make this section of Hell more inhabitable. Most of the walls were covered in big plates of gray metal stamped with the UAC logo, the floor covered in thin blue carpet, though it was mostly red now.

Studying these details brought Jack back to reality, helped nail him to the here and now. He didn't appreciate it, because now he was thinking about all those tortured people, the pain and torment they must have endured, and how there were likely other people who were in the same situation that would remain there because Jack and his team couldn't find them. But it was for the best, because he'd been going through this place on autopilot, and while he was a good enough Marine to get by on that, continuing to do it was just asking for trouble.

They spread out and searched the area in silence, moving among wrecked workstations, stacks of generic silver crates and dead bodies. Jack had emptied both of his primary weapons during the battle below, and had been reduced to his pistol at this point. He honestly couldn't remember a time before now when he'd been so strapped for bullets. And it wasn't looking like it was going to get better anytime soon, since the place had been stripped for ammo and supplies. They kept hunting and found nothing but the way out.

A teleport pad in the middle of a large stonework room. A lot of stonework lately. Jack was getting sick of the bland slate gray, gritty stone bricks. But he supposed it was better than a lot of the other crap he'd been seeing lately.

This time, Jack went first.

He stepped onto the pad and disappeared in a green flash.


	35. EPISODE 01: Unholy Cathedral

This time, when Jack appeared on the teleport pad and was already moving, shotgun in hand, he realized that he was alone. Only no, that wasn't true. He heard a roar off to his right and when he spun, shotgun raised, he screamed and stumbled back as he squeezed the trigger.

The barrel was nearly touching the demented face of a Demon.

The shell he accidentally fired off went right between its glowing golden eyes and splattered its hot, foul-smelling blood all over his visor and armor. Stumbling, he tripped and fell onto his ass, grunted as he went onto his back. And screamed again. Through the bloody film that covered his visor, he could see the bright yellow shape of a Lost Soul dive-bombing straight for him. He rolled out of the way as it hiss-roared at him.

It smacked into the stone floor with a loud clacking sound and rebounded, heading up into the air again. Jack tracked it with the shotgun, now lying on his back again, and squeezed the trigger. The first blast missed, but the second got it, blowing it to pieces and dust. He scrambled to his feet, looking around for any more assholes that might want a piece of him, but no, he was alone. And then he realized that he truly was alone.

There had been no other flashes of light, no one else stepped off the teleporter pad. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Had something attacked them right after he'd gone through? Jack almost immediately stepped back onto the teleporter pad, but stopped himself. The radio. How far was the range? There was no way to tell.

He turned it on. "This is Jack to anyone, do you copy? Over." He paused, waited, listening. Nothing. He repeated his message twice more before growling in frustration. Looking around again, to make sure he was still alone, he decided he would go back through and double-check. But as he stepped onto the pad...nothing happened.

"Shit...it's one-way," he whispered, stamping his foot on it a few times. Sighing in frustration and misery, he stepped away from the inert plate of red metal and looked around once more, paying closer attention to his surroundings. He'd come into some kind of ingress room, what might very well have been the entryway into the Unholy Cathedral. It sure looked unholy. The walls were made of that painfully familiar slate gray stonework, the floor made of darker gray stone, but the ceiling was open. There was no ceiling.

Nothing but that roiling bloody sky.

He was in a long, open room. The back was just flat wall, but ahead of him were a few broad, short alcoves, each terminating in a wide wooden door. And above each door…

"God," Jack whispered.

There were more of the nameless dead. The UAC personnel, Space Marines, poor bastards who probably had no idea what the hell was going on. They were crucified, upside down, hanging from the walls over the doorways.

At least none of them were still alive.

Jack mentally reviewed his situation as he set off towards one of the doors. His boots echoed, the sound lonely, as he hurried off for the exit. An intense wave of loneliness, fear, and apprehension had settled in heavily. He hadn't been alone for awhile, but, more importantly than that, he had no idea where his allies were.

Where Jennifer was.

He had to find her as fast as possible. He hit the door and found a big red button next to it. Without really thinking about it, he hit it. As the door slid open, he thought about his ammo. His SMG was dead, his plasma rifle was dead. He had that one frag grenade, four magazines for his pistol, (fuck, he didn't want to fall back on that thing, it felt useless against the hordes of hell), and maybe a full load for his shotgun.

And that was it.

At least he had his armor.

As the door opened up, he focused up. Had to get through this, just keep going, just keep pushing. Off to his left, he saw a pair of Demons stomping around, and Imps farther on. Nothing to the right at least. Jack shouldered the shotgun and blew away a solid chunk of a Demon's big, ugly face in a spray of pulpy gore, spraying blood all over the other, which seemed to send it into a frenzy. This garnered the attention of the Imps, who began throwing fireballs. One of them slapped the Demon in the back of the head before it had made it two steps, and the thing roared furiously and spun around, then began marching off.

Jack grinned, just a little, and made his way slowly forward, not wanting to stand still at all, but knowing he couldn't rush forward or risk getting their attention again. By the time he'd crept halfway up, the Demon had eaten the head of one of the Imps, but the other had finally brought it down through a combination of claws and fireballs. Jack shot it through the chest and pumped the shotgun, then kept on going.

The next section was more stonework, the floor made of that weird asphalt-looking stuff. As he turned the corner, he froze. There was another long section of corridor, but in this place, some of the stonework was missing. And what was beneath it chilled his blood. He was sure he'd seen this before, though he couldn't exactly remember where. Faces. A wall of faces, like islands in a sea of pale, gray flesh. Those faces were etched in horror, pain, despair, insanity. Jack tore his eyes away from them, instead focusing on the red brick pillars that lined the next corridor. At the base of the nearest one, he saw a scattering of shotgun shells.

It was a beautiful sight.

He hurried over to them, checked out the area, and gathered them up. Feeding some into the shotgun and topping it off, he pocketed the rest and then kept on going. Putting one foot in front of the other. Only way to do it. Jack tried the radio again, reaching out into the unknown, trying to hear a friendly voice, and for a few seconds, he thought he heard something, but it was so faint as to be almost nonexistent. After gathering up the another small cache of supplies, this one a trio of magazines for the SMG, he made sure his weapons were loaded up and killed his way through another desolate section of corridor.

Six dead Imps and two very dead Demons later, Jack found himself standing before a bizarre silver...door? Was it a door? It kind of looked like a door. From what he could tell, it was a square of silver made up by about six foot-thick bars. There was a contraption in front of it, a thing that was kind of like a metal detector. Basically, it was two narrow walls of deeply red bricks parallel to each other with about two feet of space. There was a base of concrete with a glowing yellow cutout in the shape of a simple diamond, and another identical copy above it. He almost stepped through it, but then hesitated, instead wanting to check out the rest of the area.

However, it turned out to be pretty fruitless. The corridor off to the right, the way yet gone, curved around out of sight, but ended abruptly in a firmly locked door with blue trim. So, he needed a blue skull-key. Sighing, he went back to the metal detector looking thing and hesitated before it. It seemed very deliberate, and he was sure it either opened the door, or sprung a trap...or both. But then he heard gunfire nearby, coming from beyond the silver barrier. Another survivor! Jack stepped between the two walls and immediately the barrier began to part. It was a door, though a weird one. The bars of silver disappeared into the floor and ceiling.

Beyond, he could see another armored figure in a broad, strange room, battling a small army of Lost Souls and Spectres.

"On your six!" Jack called as he rushed in, shotgun at ready.

"Jack!" It was Jennifer!

"Fall back to the door! Bottleneck them!" he called.

She hurried backwards as he blew two Lost Souls into pieces with one shot, cocked the gun and lowered his aim and blew a spray of gore out of a nearly-invisible Spectre that was stomping rapidly towards him. As Jennifer joined him at the door, they set to work, cleaning up the area the way only a pair of badass Marines could. Jack emptied his shotgun and let it hang, grabbing his SMG and hosing down a pair of Spectres.

When they went down, oozing dark red gore from their strangely translucent corpses, he quickly reloaded, scoping out the room. It was empty. They'd killed everything. The floor was littered with bits of bone and nearly invisible corpses.

"Holy crap, it's good to see you," Jack said as he fed more shells into the shotgun.

"Same," Jennifer replied. "Have you seen any of the others?"

He shook his head. "No. You're the first sign of life I've seen." He looked around the room for the first time, really seeing it. It was another bizarre construction. The walls were made of that same deep red brick he'd been seeing so much of lately. The ceiling was made of some dark gray metal, but it was studded with dozens of small, round red lights. For some reason the sight made him think of movie theaters from just before the twenty first century began. What a weird fucking room. He finished reloading.

"I don't suppose you've seen a blue skull-key around here?" he asked.

"No, but I'd been exploring this room ever since I teleported into it, and I had just found something when all these assholes came in," Jennifer replied, walking across the room towards its end. He followed after her, wary of any other monsters, but they were clear for now. He wasn't sure where she was going, but once they got to the back wall, he saw that there was actually a small alcove hidden from view off to the left. They moved down it. There was a skull attached to the wall at its end. It was a creepy thing to see.

"I think it's a switch," Jennifer said as they approached it. "So...you know, get ready, in case it does something bad."

Jack nodded. Once they reached it, she pressed it in, and there was a loud, heavy snapping sound. From behind them, back in the main room, he heard something grinding. Shotgun at ready, he hurried back, Jennifer right behind him. His relief was immense when he saw that a stone pillar had ground up out of the floor in the center of the room.

On it was the blue skull-key.

"Well...that works," he said, moving forward and grabbed it.

"I wished the freaking things worked in different buildings," Jennifer said as he pocketed it and they began to leave the room.

"I don't even know why they have them," Jack replied. "In fact-"

His train of thought was violently derailed as they stepped out of the room and back into the corridor, and he heard an earth-shattering roar of pure, white-hot fury. His vision turned to green as a thrown ball of energy scorched by right in front of his faceplate. He screamed in fear, stumbling backwards, turning and firing blindly to the right, where the sound and energy had come from. It had to be a Baron of Hell.

Jennifer was shouting, opening fire. Jack blinked furiously as he kept backing up, trying to get out of the line of fire. Finally, as he began to see again, he saw that Jennifer hadn't joined him in the room, instead opting to back up towards the blue door. The Baron was going after her. Cursing, Jack rushed forward. As soon as he was in the corridor, he began pumping shells into the big, eight-foot bastard, blowing bloody holes in its broad, well-muscled back. The beast roared and spun around, flinging another ball of green energy at him. He ducked it and began to back up, but then Jennifer was firing on it, and it spun back around again.

They kept at it, Jack depleting his shotgun and using up about half his SMG ammo before the thing finally let out a huge roar and, bloody and bullet-riddled, it crashed to the floor. Jack breathed out a sigh of relief as he checked the area. The thing had been hiding in a hidden room that they'd apparently tripped. A panel of wall directly next to the exit of the skull-key room had slid up. What was it even doing in there?!

Just waiting for them?

That seemed ridiculous. The room it had hidden in was tiny, barely able to contain it. Jack shook his head and rejoined Jennifer.

"Let's make some progress," he said, nodding towards the blue door.

"I sure could use some damned progress after all this crap. God, I hope Green and Stratton are okay," she said, worry leaking into her voice.

He knew how she felt. His heart skipped a beat as he heard muffled gunfire once more. They rushed forward and he reached into his pocket, grabbing the skull-key and yanking it out, trying to slot it. He dropped it. Cursing sharply, feeling his body shaking not just from adrenaline at this point but exhaustion and hunger as well, he snatched it up and shoved it into the slot, then pocketed it again and rushed into the room, SMG at ready.

This room was done up in that awful green brick, from the floor to the ceiling. There were two important features of this room. The first was Green. She was alive, kicking and fighting for her fucking life. The second was a strange octagonal pit across the room. There were green flashes of light. They were monsters, teleporting in. Apparently, the octagonal depression was serving as a receiver. Well, there was nothing to do but run forward and join their Sergeant in combat. Jack on one side, Jennifer on the other.

Their guns spoke for several minutes.

Jack was immediately worried as he sprayed down the dozen or so Imps that were making their way across the room, throwing fireballs. The three of them made sure not to bunch up. He emptied his magazine and slapped a new magazine in without thinking about it. Just one more after this. Definitely bad. He emptied the submachine gun a second time, putting down another seven Imps, but more were teleporting in all the time. They couldn't pull back, there was nowhere else to go but through this room! His SMG began dry-clicking.

"Fuck!" he snapped, letting it hang.

There were even _more_ of the assholes teleporting in. There had to be thirty corpses now, and almost as many still coming. Time for Plan B. He quickly grabbed his sole grenade, primed it and threw it right at the depression. It disappeared behind the living wave of Imps. A few seconds later, there was a tremendous explosion that threw bits and pieces of Imps everywhere, spraying the whole area with their blood.

When the bits and blood and body parts stopped falling, there were just a half-dozen of the reddish-brown bastards left, and they were put down easily enough. Jack checked his weapons over as he waited to see if anything else would show up. Nothing in his shotgun, SMG or plasma rifle, and now he was without grenades. Just his pistol, and just three magazines left. Damn. He grabbed his pistol and turned to face Green.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded shakily, reloading her own shotgun. "Yeah, thanks for the save. Fuck, that was a lot of those assholes..." She sighed and finished reloading, getting control of herself. "I found the way out, but it's locked down behind a door that has blue and yellow trim. Judging by the fact that you came through that door back there, I'm guessing you found the blue key." Jack nodded. "Good. I haven't found Stratton yet, but I also haven't finished searching this area. Is there anything back the way you came?" she asked.

"No, not as far as I can tell," Jack replied. "But I didn't have a lot of time to search."

She nodded and began heading for the door across the room, the one she must have originally come through. "Okay, we'll search the area back here for Stratton and the yellow key. If we can't find them, we'll expand our search."

They moved silently through the Unholy Cathedral. This time, they came out to an open courtyard that had an outdoors kind of feel to it. Not that that counted for much here in hell. There were a handful of simple, one-room structures scattered across the yard that looked like they'd been cleared out by Green. One held a deflated Cacodemon, another a handful of Imps, the third one holding a collection of dead zombies, and the final one was locked down, though, between the bars that made up the 'front', Jack could see the teleport pad. There were two ways out of the courtyard, besides the one they'd come through, and they broke for the left one first.

Silently, Green leading the way, they moved into a room of deep red. It was a simple matter to clear out the handful of zombies and Imps hanging around. Jack emptied another magazine from his pistol, but he managed to snag a pair of mags for his SMG. He just wanted to be done with this crap. Wanted out of this goddamned Unholy Cathedral. What was up next? Oh yeah, Mount Erebus. Didn't that just sound fucking awesome?

But they were getting closer.

They were getting there, to the Tower of Babel.

They began to head into the next area, passing through the door to the right, but as they stepped inside, heard gunfire and shouting. They hurried through the room to a door at the back, and found themselves at the start of a long hallway. By the time they'd made it halfway down, the gunfire had fallen silent, and then, suddenly, Stratton appeared. He almost shot them, but then relaxed when he realized who they were.

"Where the hell have you been?" he asked, coming to meet them. "Wait, don't answer. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that I'm finally through that damned maze and I've got something I bet we're gonna need." He reached into his pocket and held up a yellow skull-key, grinning tiredly behind his visor.

"Yes, we need that. Come on, we can leave now," Green said, taking the card.

"Thank God, already tired of this fucking place," he muttered.

The four of them headed back to the courtyard, unlocked the teleporter and began the process of leaving the Unholy Cathedral.


	36. EPISODE 01: Mt Erebus

This time, when Jack snapped into existence, he saw Green ahead of him and there was no shouting, no roaring, no gunfire. As far as entrances went, it was pretty underwhelming, but after all the crap he'd been through lately, underwhelming was a godsend. As he checked out the area, Jack thought that if and when he made it back home, (what _was_ home?), he planned on living a boring as hell life. He was pretty sure that he'd had enough excitement to last a lifetime. Or eight. He glanced back as another green flash flared and saw Jennifer.

Okay, maybe not a _completely_ boring life.

Or maybe, maybe the coin would land on the other side and he'd come out of this a hopeless adrenaline junkie. It was definitely possible. He looked around the latest environment they found themselves in and frowned deeply. It took him a moment to piece together exactly what it was he was witnessing: they had apparently teleported to the top of Mt. Erebus...which was a volcano. He and the others had appeared in an open area that was beset on the sides and to the back by a sea of bubbling crimson lava. He could see the rim of the mountaintop along the edges of the area, maybe a hundred meters away. And there were islands.

He could see one off to the right, and another, just barely in view, off to the left. There were structures on the islands, too.

He turned around and looked up at the incredibly bizarre structure looming over them. The whole front of it appeared to be lit by some strange, natural, (or unnatural), bio-luminescence. It sparkled strangely in alternating sections of deep neon blue and a dark, pulsing red. A huge set of medieval looking wooden doors were set into the front, studded with metal bolts and a few skulls. He came to stand before it with Green.

"Well, this sucks," she said, staring at the big red button inset in a square of silver metal off to the right, embedded in the thick wooden frame. She looked back over her shoulder. "As if we didn't have enough problems without being in a fucking volcano."

"We're almost there," Jack replied. "Just gotta get through this damned place and...um..." He worked his tired mind, trying to remember what ridiculous name the researchers had given the next location.

"Limbo," Stratton said.

"Yeah, of course it is," Jack muttered. "This and Limbo and then the goddamned Tower of Babel." He turned and looked around again, and realized that he could still see it. Every time he'd been able to see up, into the sky, he'd subconsciously realized that he could see the Tower of Babel. It sat like a black monolith against the crimson skies, presiding over all of this hellish wasteland. But now it was impossible to ignore.

"Is everyone ready?" Green asked. They all sounded off that they were ready. Jack shouldered his shotgun, then suddenly switched to his SMG. He'd expended his ammo on the shotgun. Damn. He was starting to lose it. He was dead on his feet, starving, sweaty as hell. What he wouldn't give for a hot meal and a hotter shower just then. He thought he might trade five years off his life just for the shower alone.

Of course, there was a good chance that his life was being measured in minutes and hours now, rather than years and decades.

Well, he'd never particularly wanted to die of old age.

Green hit the big red button. The doors ground open, revealing an ingress of Imps that were feasting on the remains of a half-dozen Space Marines. Jack didn't even have to think to start popping off bullets at the red-brown fuckers. It was standard operating procedure at that point. The four of them came in, wrathful killers in blood-smeared green armor, hosing the lobby of that awful green brick down with red hot lead and spraying blood and guts everywhere. They put down a dozen Imps and two Demons that stomped in to investigate.

As they began searching the structure, making their way slowly through hallways of green brick and purplish marble and old, rotted deadwood, it occurred to Jack that he was going to have to say something, _anything_ , to get their minds going. Because he could read it in their quiet, tense stances and their miserable faces: they were feeling the same sluggish lethargy settling over them that he was. Even adrenaline could sustain you for so long. If anything, it was draining them faster because they had to be so amped constantly.

But they couldn't take a break.

Something came to mind and he leaped on it. "Hey...how'd you join up?" he asked suddenly, looking over at Green.

"With the Corps?" she asked. He nodded. She laughed. "It...seemed like a good idea at the time. I was still in Florida right there at the end, when they declared martial law and a state of emergency and evacuated most of the state."

"Really? Holy shit, why? I mean...you had to know it was coming," Jennifer replied.

"I was nineteen and married, broke as hell. My parents weren't...exactly what you'd call parents. I got emancipated when I was sixteen, got married when I was eighteen to my high school sweetheart. As I mentioned, that didn't work out. But we were being evacuated and honestly..." she sighed and shook her head. "I was sick of it. Florida going underwater from the melting ice caps just seemed like...a sign. That what I was doing, the crap jobs I was working, wasn't going to work. They had us stay at an emergency aid shelter while we tried to figure something out and the Corps was there, offering a special deal."

Stratton laughed. "I've heard that deal: come work for us, you'll make a lot money and we'll even give your family a place to live!"

"Yep," Green said. She shook her head. "I was already pretty tough. I mean, I thought so. I took the deal, because all of our prospects were looking like shit. No one really left on my side of the family, and his family lived in Bumfuck, Tennessee, and I was _not_ moving there. So I took the deal. The idea was that I'd serve for two years while he lived in an apartment they'd provide for us out in Missouri and we'd just make that money and then we'd figure something out. And then I got stop-lossed three times and...you get the idea."

"Damn," Jack muttered. He wanted to keep it going. "Stratton?" he asked.

The younger Marine shrugged. "Nothing special, really. Grew up in New York and I just..." He trailed off, then sighed suddenly. "Fuck it," he said. "Given everything that's going on, might as well not lie. I was in a gang. Joined when I was fourteen. My family was dirt fucking poor and the gangs pretty much owned my area. I ran with the gang for five years, did a lot of bad shit, most of which the cops never found out about. But...got into drug-running. Long story short, we got caught and a kid wound up dead. I didn't do it...but I'm not entirely blameless. Cops offered me a deal: rat on my friends and sign a five year contract with the Marines and stay the fuck out of trouble, and I'd walk with probation. I wanted out, wanted to make something of myself, and didn't have anyone or anything from my old life I wanted to hold onto, so I took it."

They came to the end of a corridor, into a room that was composed of a strange mishmash of green brick, rotting black wood, and metal panels studded with strange tech. A group of zombies were milling about, apparently being presided over by a pair of Imps. The two things began shrieking and gesturing at the group of Marines. Jack returned the favor by putting a spray of bullets into one of the Imp's mouths. The others opened fire, hosing the awful things down with sprays of lead and spewing their gory remains all over the bizarre architecture.

When they were finished and picking through the remains, Stratton spoke up again. "Sorry," he said to Green. "That I didn't tell you."

"We haven't known each other that long, John," she replied. "And we've all done things we aren't proud of...and not even for good reasons. Don't worry about it."

Jack thought it was the first time he'd ever heard Stratton's first name.

They came to the first other door that led back outside and, upon opening it, discovered another open courtyard area that had a fantastic view of hell and the sea of lava they found themselves existing on. A few Lost Souls hovered nearby and the squad popped them quickly, watching their rain of bleached bone disappear into the lava.

"I wonder how we get to those islands," Green said. There didn't seem to be anything else worthwhile in this courtyard.

"Hopefully we won't have to," Jack replied.

Jennifer snorted. "Come on, you _know_ we're gonna need something out there."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, probably."

"Come on, let's get back to it," Green said, and they headed back into the central structure. "What about you, Taylor?" she asked.

"How'd I join? Boringly. Both parents were in the Marines. It was kind of expected that I would go into the service, you know? A lot of people resent that kind of thing. There's so many books and movies about kids not living up to parent's expectations and parents just expecting their kid will do something when their kid actually wants to do something else. But I never really wanted to do anything else strongly. And by the time I was eighteen, Marine life, Marine mentality, it was so ingrained in my head that when I signed up and went to Boot, I just fell into it. It felt natural."

"How did your parents react when you got shipped up here?" Jack asked, then suddenly wondered if that was too personal and kicked himself.

But Jennifer didn't seem to mind too much. She just sighed. "They were furious at first, because they didn't understand what was going on. When I got a chance to actually explain the situation, they...understood. Both of them had gotten people killed before, more than once, only when they did it, something good came out of it. Well, for the most part. They told me they'd try and pull some strings, get my two year rotation chopped down. They weren't having all that much luck, last time we talked. God...I never thought in a million years I'd encounter something like this..." She shook her head, refocused. "What about you, babe?" she asked.

Jack smiled. It was strange, the immense, profound power something as simple as her calling him that could have on his mood.

"It might take a little bit," he replied.

"We've got time," Green said.

That was true. This central structure didn't seem too occupied. "Okay then. I grew up in a little piss-hole of a town in Missouri. Not one of those small as hell towns with like four hundred people, but more like a town _like_ that, that kept growing. My parents were drunks. My life was fairly miserable when I was growing up. There was no money, because they drank it away, and they shoved me into whatever jobs they could find for me when I turned thirteen onward, and took whatever money I made to buy more booze. This went on until I was sixteen. Then my mom died. Don't be sorry, I wasn't.

"She was, and this is truly the ironic part, hit by a drunk driver. She had a life insurance policy through her work. It wasn't a great deal, I mean, if you took the long view, but if you took the short view, like my dad, then it was a shitload of cash. He kind of just...forgot about me, and drank himself into oblivion. Up until then, they'd both really been riding me to drop out of high school, so I could work more. I probably would have if she hadn't died. They were already screwing with me, turning off my alarm, refusing to drive me there, and we didn't live near any bus routes. I took to walking the six damned miles.

"Eventually, I managed to piece together enough cash for a shitty car..."

He considered his past as they worked their way through the structure. He paused whenever they found a new clutch of enemies, dispatching a group of Imps here or a squad of zombies there, gathering up whatever ammo they could.

"Anyway, why did I join? There was this park that I'd pass to and from school, both walking and driving. It was probably the only nice thing in my town. It was built around a little lake. Ducks would congregate there. I found myself stopping there more and more often during the last two years in high school. It was so peaceful at that park, watching those ducks on the water, and the fish along the shore, just under the surface. At some point, I realized that I'd come to rely on it tremendously to help me kind of...keep my sanity. Because I was beginning to realize something. Whenever I looked at my father, I was looking at my future.

"As much as I didn't want to admit it, I knew that there was a very good chance I was going to end up like him. I didn't drink...but looking back on it, I definitely would have turned to booze at some point, or maybe something worse. I could sure find it. Well, I'd decided I wanted to go on a little vacation right after I graduated and my girlfriend and I went to Kansas City. Best we could do for a vacation. Stayed in a hotel for five days, hit some parties...fifth day, we went to this party, and my girlfriend ended up cheating on me. Found her in one of the bedrooms fucking some guy...I got in my car and just drove back home, cause I was going to do something really stupid if I didn't. And when I got home…

"You know that saying about raining and pouring, right? I found that out that day. Got home, found my dad gone, the house tossed. Anything of value, including my laptop, a nice sound system I'd bought for myself, and a stash of money I thought I'd hidden well enough, it was all gone. I thought we were robbed at first, but I found a hastily scrawled note that basically amounted to: You're of legal age now, good luck with life. Bye. So he had walked out of my life. As shitty as he was, he was at least paying the damned bills. So I just...got back in my car and rolled down to the park. And that was the last nail in the coffin. The ducks were dead."

"God," Jennifer whispered.

"Man, this is like a fucking Greek tragedy," Green said.

Jack laughed, an unexpected burst of it coming up out of him. "Yeah, you know, it was."

"How did they die?" Green asked.

"I don't even know. I can't remember. I just saw that they were dead and kinda lost it. Left my car, just started walking. I'm not sure how long I walked, but eventually I kind of came back to myself. And when I did, I was outside of the recruitment office. It just seemed like a sign, you know? So I signed up, never looked back."

"That...really sucks," Stratton said.

Jack laughed again. "Yep."

There didn't seem to be anything else to say, which was just as well, because they'd finally found what they were looking for. While he'd been spinning his sad tale, they'd found another two courtyards. The first had a single structure that the UAC had apparently been using as an armory. Although it was mostly cleared out, there had been more than enough. Jack managed to replenish his depleted stocks of shells and bullets, and he even found ammo for his strange plasma rifle, inasmuch as it could be called ammo.

And they found a chaingun.

Green pulled rank and took it.

Jack was happy enough with his plasma rifle. He was less than thrilled with what they found in the final courtyard.

"Well, crap," Green said.

Jack agreed heartily with that sentiment. There was a solidly built stone structure, small, just one room, taking up most of the open space. There were three bars of titanium across the front opening, with just enough space in between them to show what the structure was holding: the way out. The teleporter pad.

The only other thing in the area was a stand-alone teleport pad with a blood-smeared PDA next to it. Jack quickly retrieved it, staring at the cracked screen, wondering if maybe Watts had left them another message, but there was just a text file on this one. He quickly read through it. "What's it say?" Green asked as they approached.

"Two good pieces of intel. The first is that those silver bars only unlock for the red and blue skull-keys. The other is that this teleporter pad leads out to that island over there," he replied, pointing to an island of black rock with a structure that apparently was built mainly of skulls. "And that's about it. So...at least we know that."

Green sighed. "Of course. Who wants to go first?"

"I'll do it," Jack replied. He wanted to be done with this crap. Nothing new there. Switching to his shotgun, he stepped up to the pad, hoping that...well, hoping he survived. There were a lot of things that could go wrong. It could lead somewhere else, or lead into a room packed with monsters, or malfunction. He could still see Thompson's body, sticking out of the wall. But that was the life of a Marine, although this was a little ridiculous.

Jack stopped stalling and stepped onto the pad.

He fully expected to appear in a room with some bad guys, but instead he was in the center of a room of gray marble and skulls. It was empty, though the walls had several openings in them that led to little alcoves. He immediately felt suspicious and began moving slowly about the room, checking carefully down each alcove. In another flash of light, Jennifer appeared. He looked back at her as she stepped off the pad.

"Nothing?" she asked.

"So far," he replied.

She helped him with the search and by the time the other two had appeared, they'd determined that there was nothing down any of the alcoves, the teleport pad was one-way, and there didn't seem to be a way actually out of the room. The only abnormality, the only thing that stood out, was a button at the end of one of the alcoves.

"I'm going to push it, everyone ready?" he asked.

"As ready as we can be," Green replied.

Jack pushed the button. The second his gloved hand made contact with the big, flat, red button, the wall ahead of him snapped up, revealing a recessed niche occupied by an Imp. "Oh shit!" he screamed, trying to get his shotgun up.

The Imp jumped him.

As he heard gunfire behind him, followed by several roars and shrieks, he realized that he wasn't going to be getting any help. The thing snapped its teeth together inches from his faceplate and was spitting drool all over the glass as it roared. He'd managed to grab its wrists, but the monster was _strong_. How odd it was that he'd started putting them down with ease and now this one was about three inches from killing him.

Jack jerked his head up, knowing he had to get the thing off of him and damned soon. His faceplate cracked as it smashed into the Imp's mouth. Several of the thing's big canine teeth broke off and blood began to leak out of its mouth. It took two more bashes before the Imp was disoriented enough for him to throw it off. Which was a happy trick, given how tight the alcove was, but he managed to shove it back the way it had come, into the little niche. While it thrashed and shrieked, he snatched up his shotgun and blew the top half of its head off. He heard a grunt and footfalls from behind him and flipped over.

A zombie was coming towards him.

He was trying to get into position to shoot it when a bullet exploded out of its forehead and the monster pitched forward.

"Shit, Jack, are you okay?" Jennifer asked, hurrying down the alcove.

"Just fine," he replied as she helped him up. "I love getting jumped by Imps."

"Found the blue key!" Green called.

"One step closer," Jack muttered as he and Jennifer left the alcove. They took a moment to check the area again, now that more areas were revealed, and found a handful of ammo and another teleportation pad. Jack again went first, and snapped into existence in a large, open room, the walls covering in twitching vines so thick he had no idea what might be beneath them. At first, as he stepped off the pad, he thought he was alone, but then a ball of blue-yellow flame seared close enough to screw with his vision, and he was stumbling away, aiming up with his SMG and spraying fire wildly into the air. Three Cacodemons hovered overhead.

He'd managed to pop one of them by the time the others came through, and they helped him mop up the others. They performed a search of the area and all they managed to find was another teleportation pad hidden behind a panel that was, thankfully, otherwise empty. Once again, Jack took the plunge, he thought that he was becoming a pro at it, and when he appeared in front of an Imp, he had already raised his shotgun before stepping onto the pad, so the barrel was aimed right at the thing's hideous face.

He blew its fucking head clean off.

Strafing, he cocked the weapon and shot a shell into another Imp's chest, spraying the others with dark red blood. As before, the others stepped off the pad in flashes of green light and helped him put down the screaming, roaring beasts. This time, after mopping up the last of the resistance, they found a small stash of ammo in a single supply crate and, next to the crate, the red skull-key. They grabbed it, found another teleport pad and stepped on through to the other side. This one led back to the original pad, thankfully.

"Fucking finally," Jack muttered as the others teleported in. They gathered at the stone structure holding the only way out of there and unlocked it with both skull-keys. Jack expected something to happen, but they remained alone. As he headed into the structure, he saw something that he'd initially missed.

A PDA.

Crouching, he grabbed it and fired it up. This one was from Watts. Everyone gathered around to watch the single video file.

Watts appeared on the screen, looking worse than ever. There were deep, dark bags under his bloodshot eyes and his helmet was missing. Part of his hair was singed away and there were several cuts on his face.

" _We're in the shit now,"_ he said, and he sounded as bad as he looked, his voice rough and uncertain. _"Got hit hard here, ambushed us in the fucking lobby. So many of them. Everyone else but Fletcher is dead. Just the two of us now. Gotta make it to the Tower of Babel. Might need to take a break, though. Dead on my feet."_

That was it.

The time stamp put it as being recorded five hours ago. They were close. He wondered fiercely if Watts had made it to the Tower of Babel, to Mars.

Well, he'd find out sooner or later.

Jack stepped up to the exit pad.


	37. EPISODE 01: Limbo

This time, Jack was the last one to teleport in.

As he stepped aboard the strange square of red and his vision went green, he was then stepping off of another identical square into a room that was filled with the sounds of battle. Though, he noted as he raised his shotgun, the battle was mostly over. Jennifer, Green, and Stratton had made quick work of the handful of Demons that had apparently been stomping around the room before they'd snapped in. He turned, aimed, and fired, pounding a slug shell into the gaping maw of a Demon coming right towards him.

The back of its head opened up in a plume of dark gore as he cocked the shotgun, turned and fired a second time. This shell tore away a solid chunk of the next Demon's skull, exposing some of its brain and causing it to stumble and growl furiously. He fired a second time into the exposed brain and splattered the dark matter all over the place. As it fell, he turned to check out the rest of the room and found that all the other Demons were dead. As he fed a few more shells into his shotgun, he studied the environment.

It was that same gray, pockmarked stonework that so much of this awful realm seemed to be made of. As he looked around, spying only a single door in the whole room, he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. It had been dully throbbing for a little while now, but the pain was starting to come back. He tried to push it from his mind. He was going to have a wicked scar from that damned ball of green energy the Baron of Hell had smacked him with. He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, trying to get his head back in the game.

They were so close.

Just this and the Tower.

"We all ready to proceed?" Green called. She had moved over to the door and found a way to open it. The other three joined her and indicated that they were indeed ready to pump a lot more monsters full of bullets.

She opened the door.

On the one hand, Jack though as he stepped through and secured the area, there weren't any hostiles in the immediate area. So that was good. On the other hand, there was a shitload of acid, a sea of it, immediately in front of them. That was bad. And then there was just the flat out fucking annoying part: he could presently see the teleport out of this place. And they couldn't get to it. Immediately, he began surveying the area, looking for some way out of this situation. They were in a huge rounded room, the walls more of that gray stonework. They were standing on an asphalt path that ran around the perimeter of the room.

It was maybe six feet wide.

Not a lot of room to work with.

Within that asphalt ring was a sea of bubbling green acid, and in the exact center of that acid was an island that held the teleport.

And there was apparently no way to get to it. He could also see three other exits, one directly across from where he stood, then one to the left and one to the right. Jack growled in frustration and took a moment to check over his ammo. His SMG was dead, his pistol had one mag left to it and his shotgun had enough shells to be full. He still had his plasma rifle. It was full up as well, but he really didn't want to use it.

"Sergeant?" Jack asked.

"Ugh, let's check out these doors. Gotta be a way of getting over there," Green replied. He could tell her temper was getting shorter. He didn't blame her, all their nerves were becoming frayed at this point, so close to the damned end.

Provided it _was_ the end, and not a shitty ending at that.

Jack shook his head, didn't want to think about any of that now. Just focus on the right here, the present. One boot in front of the other. One demon at a time. He held his shotgun at ready as he and the others followed after Green. She'd decided to head left. They moved over to another large, wooden door that slid up into the ceiling when the big red button next to it was pressed. Immediately, they were thrown into the shit again.

A dozen Demons stood along the length of a gray stone hallway, human arms sticking out of the wall ever couple of feet, their fingernails burning a smoldering yellow. Jack ignored the decorum as he shouldered his shotgun once more and opened fire. The others joined him. A chorus of roars was met with a symphony of gunfire. The blasts of shotgun discharges and the chattering of SMG rattling through their magazines fought for dominance over the screams of the monstrous Demons. One dropped, two dropped, three…

The gray walls ran red with blood.

When it was all over, not a single Demon had managed to reach them, although one of them had gotten within a few feet. Jack's shotgun was spent and he was reduced to his pistol, although it was tempting as hell to pull out that plasma rifle. But no, not yet. Although damn, he was going to be forced to pretty soon if they didn't find more ammo. He moved with the other three slowly down the corridor, trying to keep his mind focused, but that was getting harder and harder as time went on. He was thinking about ducks.

Talking about that park, about his dark years, had kind of opened the vault. There were a lot of memories there. He'd downplayed it a little, but he'd been devastated when he'd walked in on Laurie cheating on him. Sometimes, he thought that was his worst memory, and maybe one of the worst things you could possible experience: seeing the person you loved fucking someone else behind your back. It was one thing if it was an open relationship. He'd actually done that before once with mild success. And it wasn't the same as swapping partners.

There was permission then, there was knowledge and trust.

He really would have gone to prison for murder if he hadn't walked out, gotten into his car, and just gotten the hell out of there.

When was the last time he had seen a duck in real life?

He couldn't remember.

They pressed on through the area, finding themselves in another maze of stone and asphalt. He kept a sharp eye out for hostiles and ammo. There were just a few more Demons to contend with, and they did manage to find some ammo. Enough for him to top off his shotgun and reload his SMG. The maze eventually led to another wooden doorway. Jack hit the button this time as they readied themselves for whatever lay beyond. Given the way this place had the feel of a funhouse from hell, there was definitely something waiting.

And he was right.

As he opened the door, he found himself looking into a large room that was almost empty. He saw something across the way, on the far wall, and there was also a small armada of Cacodemons hovering overhead. He counted five in all. Green gave the order to open fire and Jack sprayed one of them down with fire from his SMG, throwing out short bursts as not to waste any ammo. He ended up trading a magazine of bullets for a dead Cacodemon. Letting the gun hang, he switched to his shotgun and put two shells into one that Stratton had been focusing on and then it splattered its strange, alien guts all over the place.

Cacodemons looked weird on the inside.

Jennifer got smacked in the chestplate with a fireball, but it didn't do nearly so much damage as the Baron of Hell's green balls of plasma did. It just sent her stumbling back a few steps and made her armor tick and hiss as it cool rapidly. Stratton almost took a fireball to the face, but managed to dodge at the last moment.

They managed to put down the Cacodemons without too much trouble.

"Okay, let's see what this is all about," Green said once they had fully secured the area. The quartet of hell-stricken survivors moved across the room, through the mess they'd created. There was a big silver switch embedded in the wall and a PDA affixed to the wall beside it. Green read it over and nodded slowly to herself. She flipped the switch. Somewhere distantly, Jack could hear grinding. "So," she explained as she began leading them back through the maze. "Apparently, there are three of those switches. Each one raises a portion of a pathway that will lead across the acid bath and will lead us to the exit."

"Great," Jack muttered.

When they got back to the main room, Jack saw that an asphalt segment had risen out of the acid. It was about ten feet long, covering just a third of the distance, directly in front of the original doorway they'd come through.

Well...at least they were a third done.

They made their way back across the asphalt walkway to the right doorway. They came into another broad room, this one constructed of fiery red brick. The floor was cut in half about midway across the room. A trench about ten feet wide was clearly visible, although thankfully there was a bridge across it. Jack was just wondering what was in it when he heard a sharp hissing sound and cried out in response to the sound, fear flooding him. He spun to the right and looked up. There were squares cut out of the walls right up at the ceiling level, squares of space that seemed to be full of flickering hellfire.

And out of these squares came hissing Cacodemons.

"Shit!" Green snapped, raising her weapon and opening fire. Jack immediately joined in with her, as did the others. He emptied his shotgun, putting down two of the things before it ran dry and he was reduced to his pistol once more. He ducked a fireball and opened fire on a third one, hearing the others blasting away behind him. He had to deal with this last damned Cacodemon. He kept firing, popping off shots, aiming for its big headlight eye and its huge maw. The thing was bleeding now, dripping dark red blood.

As he squeezed the trigger on the last round, the Cacodemon belched out another fireball. He jumped back but it crashed into his right leg and he yelled in surprised pain. He fell backwards, and suddenly Stratton was standing over him, shotgun in hand. The man fired and finished off the Cacodemon, then pulled Jack to his feet. As he looked around, grabbing his plasma rifle (it was now his only loaded weapon), he saw that they'd finished off the Cacodemons. What was it with this place and Cacodemons?

They crossed the bridge and found nothing on the other side save for a stairwell that led down. Jack wanted to take point, but Green told him to hold back in the middle, try to keep as much of the plasma ammo as possible. He was reluctant to do so, but not for any good reasons. He wanted to fight, he sure as hell wanted to fight if other people's lives were on the line, but he knew she was right. So he followed after her, Jennifer and Stratton behind him. As they headed down, they found a second maze waiting for them.

This one was definitely worse.

The walls were made of deeply red brick, the floor was covered in about three inches of blood, and the corridors were narrow. And there were a lot of openings. They began to make their way through the maze, hunting for the second switch.

"What do you think they'll do with us when we get back?" Stratton asked suddenly.

Jack didn't want to think about any farther in the future than five minutes from now, mainly out of a need to help him preserve his sanity, and yet he felt that if he didn't do _some_ kind of speculation and allow himself some small ration of hope that this was going to work out, then he would be sacrificing a portion of his sanity anyway.

"I fucking want hazard pay out the ass for this," he replied.

Green and Jennifer laughed. "I'm planning on raiding the armory and the mess and then locking myself in some living quarters for like three weeks. With you," she said to Stratton. "Cause I'm not going to want anything but baths, sex, and food after this."

"And sleep," Stratton muttered. "I could sleep for a fucking year."

"Amen," Jennifer muttered. "I feel about the same way. And a nightlight. I'm sleeping with a nightlight from now on, I don't give a shit what anyone says. I fucking earned it." She glanced at Jack. "Okay, well, I guess since you'll be sleeping with me on a regular basis _you_ get a say in the whole nightlight thing."

"I'm totally cool with that," he replied. "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to be in a completely dark room anymore."

They fell silent and spent the next few moments putting down a handful of Imps that were apparently roaming the tight blood-red corridors. When they had another quiet moment, Jack spoke up again. "I hate to kill the mood, but...how _are_ we going to handle this?" he asked. "I mean, consider everything we know. Even if we play dumb and pretend we know none of their secrets, we know about all of this."

"Yeah," Green muttered. "I doubt the UAC is going to let us just walk." She was silent for a moment longer. "Shit, I dunno. But don't give them anything. We'll play it by ear when we come out of the gateway on Mars. Hell, who knows, maybe they'll be so impressed with the fact that we survived all this bullshit that they'll promote us as experts on hell."

"Wouldn't that be nice," Stratton said. "Not sure if I could live with it, though."

"I don't think I could either," Green murmured. "Not after knowing they knew about all this, and they didn't care. They just did it anyway."

"We'll figure something out," Jack said. "I guess all that matters right now is living long enough to be able to figure it out."

"Good point," Jennifer replied.

Jack heard a slew of gunshots from up ahead and saw that Green was facing a turn in the tight network of corridors. The way she lowered her weapon and moved forward meant that it wasn't all that serious, whatever it had been. He followed and found one, long corridor. No other alcoves snaked away to the left or right. It was very appealing. More appealing was the fact that there were zombie corpses strewn along it.

And most appealing of all was the way it ended maybe fifty feet ahead. Green was approaching the second switch they needed to hit. Jack took a moment to rifle through their pockets and check their weapons. There were three technicians. One had been a Space Marine and she had been the only one holding a weapon, a shotgun. There were just a few shells in it. He took what he could and no one asked him to share. He seemed to be the one who was always on the precipice of running completely out of ammo.

As it was, he managed to reload his pistol and shotgun. It would have to do. Didn't it always? Green flipped the switch and they traced their way back through the maze, managing to get back to the central area with a minimum of fuss. This time, the pathway that extended across the acid lake now spanned twenty feet of it. He briefly entertained the idea of just running and jumping, but...no. Ten feet was too much for someone in armor. And while he might risk his own life doing it, he wouldn't risk the others by suggesting it.

And so they went into the third and final door.

This one led to a simple square room of tan brick that made him think vaguely of desert camo. Nothing in there, just another door directly across from them, this one made of silver steel. There seemed to be no real rhyme or reason to these buildings, to this region, hell, probably to the entirety of this other universe.

It was crazy, incomprehensible chaos.

The next room was bigger and had several UAC-stamped silver crates along the walls that had been ripped open and emptied out, debris scattered across the floor. Jack kept a sharp eye out, as he kept expecting to see something lurking nearby, an Imp, a Demon, a Lost Soul. But the next two rooms, which were larger than the previous two, were just as empty. Almost without thinking about it, as they approached the next door, Jack swapped out his weapons. He held the plasma rifle tightly in his grip now. He readied himself.

Green opened the next door.

She let out a scream of terrified shock and stumbled backwards. Overriding her own scream was a furious roar culled from the deepest depths of hell. A brilliant green light streaked out of door and barely avoided hitting her as she jerked away from it. A Baron of Hell stormed out of the doorway like a juggernaut and almost casually backhanded Stratton. He shouted as he flew backwards, sailing across the room.

Jack was intensely grateful that he'd saved up his plasma rifle ammo, or energy, or whatever it was this thing took. He leveled it at the huge awful beast, towering over the rest of them, and squeezed the trigger. As brilliant blue-white bursts of energy sailed out of the strange muzzle, he moved the weapon up and down, hosing the monster with as much as he could. The Baron roared and tried to throw another ball of energy, but the barrage overwhelmed it. In the end, Jack trade a fully charged plasma rifle for one very dead Baron of Hell.

"Damn," he whispered in the immense silence that fell following its final, ear-shattering roar of death. He blinked several times, his vision screwy because of all the flashing, and took a quick look around as he switched back to his shotgun. It would be all too easy for something to sneak up on them during that exchange.

But they were alone.

"I'm okay," Stratton said, rejoining them.

As there didn't seem to be anything to say, they located the final switch, flipped it, and headed back to the main room. The pathway was complete. Jack kept expecting something to happen as he led the way across the asphalt walkway, but nothing did, even as he stepped up to the teleport pad. _Well,_ he thought, _almost done._

He stepped onto the pad.


	38. EPISODE 01: Tower of Babel

The first thing Jack saw upon snapping into existence was a corpse.

And he _recognized_ this corpse. "Oh shit," he whispered to no one as he stepped off the pad and took a quick look around. He was in a relatively small, octagonal room, the walls made of gritty, cracked masonry, the floor made of white stone. Though most of it was covered by bodies. There had to be over a dozen of them in here, all of them Space Marines. There were weapons, a lot of them actually, scattered among the bodies.

Although there were four doors out, they were all closed and he couldn't hear anything in the immediate vicinity. He moved back over to the corpse he recognized and crouched, frowning deeply, staring intently. Whatever had happened, Watts had apparently been subjected to fire. Half his skull was blackened, most of his hair singed off. His armor was pitted and blackened in several areas, his helmet missing. He'd died sitting with his back to one of the walls. Jack looked around as another green flash occurred.

This place felt like a bad place. Why were there so many corpses here specifically? "What happened?" Jennifer asked.

"Not sure," Jack replied. "But we seem to be secure."

She stood beside him. "That's Watts," she murmured.

"Yep."

"Goddamnit."

"Yep."

Well, the guy was a hardass survival type, he probably had some very useful supplies on him. It was probably what he would have wanted. It's sure as hell what Jack would want, if he died. For whatever had on him to go towards someone else's survival. He reached out and opened the first of several compartments on the green security armor the man was wearing. Empty. He moved over to a second one. Oh hey, two magazines of-

Watts's eyes shot open.

"Fuck!" Jack snapped, falling back.

"Who're you?" Watts croaked. There was another flash.

"Oh shit," Green said, immediately moving to join them.

"Ward," Jack replied. "I'm Ward. What happened? We've been following you, Watts. We got your messages."

He laughed weakly, then coughed, spraying Jack's visor with a thin haze of blood. "Wondered if anyone was gonna see those fuckin' things." His face hardened. "Listen," he wheezed, "it's out there." He reached up, weakly gripped Jack's armored shoulder, causing a bolt of pain to shoot through it as the armor rubbed against his burned flesh, but he ignored it. "Got one weakness...I think." They waited, listening.

"Backpack," he whispered, then his hand fell away and his breath left him in one long, wheezing exhalation.

He didn't inhale.

"Fuck," Stratton snapped.

Jack hadn't even realized the final member of their party had joined them, he'd been so focused on Watts.

"What was he saying?" Green asked.

"Something's out there and apparently its weakness is it's backpack...whatever that means," Jack replied quietly.

With a sigh, he finished his search. "Gather up whatever you can," he said quietly. "Obviously there's something really nasty out there."

He imagined that it was something they'd hadn't seen yet. No real clues as to what, but it was what his gut was telling him, and so far, on this adventure, his gut had been pretty dead accurate. Watts didn't have a whole lot. Just some magazines for the SMG and some shotgun shells. Jack began to stand up, then hesitated.

Something silver was poking out from behind Watts's corpse. Frowning, he pulled the man carefully aside and revealed the hidden treasure.

"Damn," he whispered. The man had been laying against a rocket launcher. Jack checked it out. Fully loaded, too. Two rockets, ready to go. "Thanks."

He stood up and began looking around, hunting for spare rockets. It'd be nice to have some more. The others were gravely silent as they searched the corpses. As he hunted among the dead, he realized that all of them hadn't actually been killed in here. They'd crawled in here. And whatever it was outside hadn't followed them in, apparently. And they were all scorched or burned in one way or the other. What the hell did that mean? He mulled over it as he continued his search, and he actually managed to find a handful of little silver rockets. These things really packed a punch, given their size, he thought as he pocketed them.

"Now what?" Stratton asked as they finished their search.

"I guess we go out there and...deal with whatever it is. We should search the immediate area for another gateway, but I doubt we'll find it," Green replied.

Jack went to one of the four silver-white doors and hit the big, square button next to it. The door slid up into the ceiling. He held the shotgun at ready. The door opened to reveal...an empty room about the size of a garage. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of that same silver-white metal. There was another door, this one larger, at the opposite end of the room. There didn't appear to be any other way into or out of the room.

"Huh," he muttered, stepping aside so the others could see after he was sure it was clear. "I guess we should check the others."

They did so, opening the final three doors one after the other, and found apparent carbon copies of the original room. What the hell _was_ this place? What was it for? What was its purpose? It didn't matter, he supposed. None of this really mattered. He hadn't really had to understand this nightmare dimension to survive it.

So far, at least.

"Let's open one of these doors," Green said, and set off.

Jack and the others followed after her. Their boots echoed hollowly in the silver-white room. She reached the door first, reached out to hit the button next to it, hesitated, then punched it. The door slid open, letting in that familiar crimson-tinted light. She stepped up to the threshold, took a quick canvas of the area, then stepped out.

The others followed.

Jack studied the new environment as he stepped into it. They were in a large, open, outdoors area, beset on all sides by dark gray cliff sheers. There were big, horrifying pillars stuck seemingly at random across the black sand ground. They were rectangular in nature, dark brown in color, about twenty feet tall. And carved into their surfaces was a face. A hideous, alien face that didn't look like anything he'd seen so far. It had a big bulbous skull with a huge mouth stuffed with teeth, with what seemed to be wires or tubes coming away from the mouth and going around to the back of its head, out of sight.

Its gaze held a terrifying, malignant intelligence.

It was evil.

He forced himself to stop staring at it, but the face was all over the place, on all of the pillars. He ignored it, moving out, away from the group, as not to make a big target. He had the shotgun out still, but wanted to switch to something heavier. This place felt absolutely threatening. Where _was_ this apparently enemy that had killed so many? As he got a better view of the area, he began to see craters in the landscape.

Craters? They looked like the holes bombs make. Well, that would be at least somewhat consistent with all the burn marks he'd seen on the bodies. So what _was_ it? He was tempted to say it was a Baron of Hell, and yet he knew the only reason that was tempting was because he'd dealt with those before. He'd killed those before.

No, this had to be something different.

He moved slowly around another one of those hideous pillars, deliberately avoiding looking at the face, and still saw nothing but the distant rock wall and the black sand. It was surprisingly solid beneath his feet, for which he was grateful. It was a bitch to run in sand in heavy-ass armor. He could feel the tension mounting on the air.

And that's when he heard it.

It was a scream, and yet it was unlike any scream he had heard so far since hitting Phobos. In fact, he wasn't entirely sure he'd heard it anywhere in his entire life, or at least not to this magnitude. It was a scream that began way up there, in power and decibels, and didn't fade away. It just kept going. It was the scream of someone who had completely checked out. The scream of someone who had been brought right to the absolute precipice of madness...and then catapulted over it. The scream of someone who had seen something that had shattered them.

It was Stratton.

Jack spun around, his whole body tensing and going frigid, his heart slamming painfully in his chest, terrified of what he would see, of this thing that had made Stratton apparently begin to scream his sanity away.

But he couldn't see it, not yet.

Only…

Only, he could _hear_ it. Whatever it was, it let out a roar so loud that it blew out the audio on Jack's suit. He cried out, another jolt of painful terror sweeping through him and making his skin crawl, his innards squirm.

 _What was it?!_

He barely heard a loud whooshing sound as his audio (and ears) came back online. But he didn't need to hear it, because he saw what looked to be a miniature cruise missile come sailing from behind the huge tower, ( _the Tower of Babel,_ his mind whispered feverishly), and sail straight at Stratton. It covered the distance in barely the blink of an eye.

And then, in a flash of light and a thunderclap of sound, John Stratton was no more.

There was only a crater where he had once stood, just two seconds ago, screaming his sanity away as he stared at the Unnamed Terror. Green was screaming something, but Jack couldn't make it out, couldn't process what was happening, because then he _felt_ it, he _felt_ the fucking thing coming towards them around the tower.

Each footfall was an earthquake.

 _How fucking big was it!?_

And that was when he saw it. It was like the rest of the universe, the rest of reality, dropped away, and all he could see was the colossus of terror.

It had to be twenty fucking feet tall.

It was _red_. It was violently red. And it was a demon. An honest-to-God fucking demon if he'd ever seen one in his whole life so far. All the other things he'd seen, the Imps, the Cacodemons, the zombies, even that big spider queen bitch, all of it looked like child's play compared to this behemoth. It had hooves, although one was black and looked natural, (or unnatural, really, but _organic_ ,) and the other was gleaming silver. About half of its right leg was metal. Above its waistline, where its stomach should have been, was stringy meat, raw musculature.

Above that, its chest looked like it was carved from granite to be as muscular as possible. Its right arm also looked organic, although he could see more silver in the form of wires running along it. Its left arm, however, ended in a corroded, soot-stained silver launcher. ( _Where the mini cruise missiles come from,_ some distant but still coherent part of his terror-stricken mind warned him.) But its head...its head was huge, the size of a car. Twin eyes that burned with actual flame stared at them. It had huge, wickedly sharp black horns curving along the sides of its demonic skull, sticking out about half a foot beyond its broad forehead.

A word shrieked out of the dark depths of his mind.

Well, two words, actually, smashed into one word.

 _Cyberdemon_.

Then the Cyberdemon aimed its launcher dead at him and a second whoosh sounded. His body reacted, because his mind checked out. Like before, when he had lost himself to a red haze, he totally lost it, only now it was to pure mindless terror. He dove, rolled, scrambled to his feet, and started running. The missile struck one of the nearby pillars and the shockwave sent him flying. It picked him up and threw him a good ten feet. Crying out, he rolled to a halt and once more scrambled to his feet. He wasn't sure how long he ran around screaming. Twice, or maybe more, he tripped or was thrown back to the ground.

But then he came back to some semblance of sanity when he heard Jennifer's voice screaming at him. Shaking violently from adrenaline and terror, he skidded to a halt and spun around. Still not all there, but there enough to act, Jack switched to the rocket launcher, almost dropping it. Green and Jennifer were firing at the huge beast, dodging the missiles. Their bullets and shells seemed to be doing absolutely no damage.

They needed help.

Jack aimed the launcher and fired both barrels at once, launching both rockets. They shrieked through the air and nailed the Cyberdemon's broad chest dead on, creating twin orange-red explosions. The beast roared and fired back at him, apparently undamaged. Jack barely managed to doge out of the way as he jammed another two rockets in and fired once more, this time aiming for its face. Again, they both hit dead on and again did no apparent damage. Holy fucking shit, how in the hell were they going to deal with this?

He fired another pair of rockets at its exposed stomach, at that raw meat. One missed, but the second one hit, and he saw a little bit of blood come out, but nowhere near enough. He didn't have enough rockets, they didn't have enough weapons and ammo and explosives between them to take this thing down even if they could somehow keep dodging long enough. And this thing was just going to steamroll over them.

Looking around frantically as he fed the final two rockets into the tubes, he snapped the launcher shut and saw that Green was pretty far out. Actually, she was behind it now. And then he heard a crackle on the radio.

" _Jack! Backpack! The thing has a fucking rocket pack on its back! Shoot it and you'll blow that fucker to hell!"_ Green shouted, her voice ragged and grim.

" _We'll distract it, get behind it, Jack!"_ Jennifer said.

He wanted to be the one to distract the damn thing, to play Russian roulette with it, but there wasn't time to pass the launcher to either of them, this was just the way the cards fell. This was their only shot at taking this thing down. He retreated, ceasing all action against it, getting behind one of the pillars, and heard the others screaming at it, firing at it. No more missiles came his way at least. He found himself pray quietly that they weren't killed, that they could get out of this alive. Stratton was already dead.

No more, please. Please.

" _Jack, now!"_ Green snapped over the radio.

Jack grabbed the launcher and stepped around the pillar. He felt a strange, numb dislocation settle over him, as if something had flicked the switch on his emotions. He was cold and calm as he raised the launcher and aimed at the titan. It was facing mostly away from him now, and he could see it, the 'backpack', a large, bulging protrusion of metal housing that had to be where it got its damned missile supply from.

He squeezed the firing ring.

A single rocket shrieked through the air and Jack felt a cold bolt of black fear as it missed, barely, narrowly slipping by the immense thing and sailing off to explode uselessly against the far wall. Jack took a deep breath, held it, took careful aim again. He had to make this shot, it was the last rocket. They might be able to find more among the dead, and they _might_ be able to come up with some other way of killing or escaping it, but both of those seemed insanely unlikely. No, he had to make this goddamned shot, right here, right now.

He fired.

So did the Cyberdemon at almost the same time.

Both of their missiles connected with their intended targets.

Jack's final rocket hit the Cyberdemon's missile supply and for a split second he was terrified that it wasn't enough. But the thing roared suddenly, another earth-shattering sound that rolled across the area, and it began to tremble violently. Small explosions started to ripple all along the immense monstrosity that very quickly culminated in a miniature mushroom cloud that engulfed the entire creature, leaving nothing behind but a crater, much like its many victims. How many had it killed? Jack wondered.

One more, at least.

The Cyberdemon's missile had successfully been launched right before its death, and it connected directly with Green.

She disappeared with a scream in a plume of flame and black sand.

As the explosions died off and their sounds fell away, Jack slowly lowered the launcher, staring at the spot where Green had been.

She was dead.

They were both dead.

Watts and his team were dead.

And now it was very likely that he and Jennifer were the only two living humans in this whole realm. For a cold-gut second, he realized he couldn't see Jennifer. He looked around frantically, then saw her coming towards him from around a pillar. He slung the launcher and began walking towards her, meeting her halfway.

"Come on," she said quietly, "let's find the way out of here."

It was the only thing left to him. It took close to ten minutes of silent searching, but they finally located another gateway. This one was smaller, tucked away inside of a cave built into the rock wall they hadn't seen earlier. It was on and, as best they could tell, linked up Mars City. Without hesitation, the two of them stepped through the portal.


	39. EPISODE 01: Back From Hell

**PART FIVE  
** – _ENDGAME_ –

* * *

Jack thought he might be dead.

Sadly, this was not an unfamiliar thought. He wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious, but he had an idea it was more than a few minutes. But if that was true, then how was he still alive? Getting knocked out seemed like a one-way ticket out of life in a place like this. So was it just luck? Or had something else happened? Had something finally gone _right_ for once? Jack didn't want to open his eyes, but his senses were already coming back to him.

He hurt.

That was the biggest thing his body was telegraphing to him. His head, his shoulder, his ribs, his feet, his knees. Everywhere. Just everywhere. His ass hurt from falling on it so many times. He could smell things: blood, death, sweat, but these scents were not overwhelming at least. He heard movement, someone mutter quietly, a voice he wasn't familiar with. Or maybe he'd heard that voice once, sometime recently…

Jack opened his eyes.

His gaze, blurry but coming into focus, stared up at a bland ceiling of gray metal with a few dim bulbs providing light. They flickered briefly.

"Holy shit, you're awake."

A face came into view, staring down at him, a vaguely familiar face.

"Who're you?" Jack groaned. "Where am I?"

"Storage room. Mars City." The man looked anxious. "I'm PFC Sanders."

"Private Ward," Jack said.

"What the hell happened to you? I found you and your friend naked out in the hallway. There's was this crazy electrical sound, blew out a lot of lights, and then I found the two of you on the floor. There was smoke coming off of you."

"Long story," Jack replied. He sat up suddenly. "My friend?" A blanket fell away from him. He looked over and saw Jennifer beside him, still unconscious, but breathing, and safe, also beneath a blanket.

"Yeah," Sanders said. "Uh...so you two are Space Marines then? Where'd you come from?"

"Hell." Sanders stared at him. As he did, perhaps waiting for more elaboration, Jack realized that he did recognize the man, although he knew why he'd had a hard time with it. He was one of the Marines he'd seen patrolling around Mars City back before all this shit went down. He had an idea that him and Thompson might have been friends.

"I need some water," Jack said.

"Oh. Right. Hold on."

Sanders got up and moved over to one of several crates that had been pried open. The storage room was small, one wall taken up by a shelf packed with smaller crates. There was an untidy stack of the silver boxes in one corner, and another was taken up by a table. There was just one door to the room and it was shut.

Sanders returned with a canteen of water.

"Going to need more," Jack said, opening it up. "And some food. And uniforms. And guns."

"Got you covered," Sanders replied, moving over to the other side of the room again. Jack drank half the canteen away and then returned his attention to Jennifer. He gently put a hand on her shoulder, began to slowly rock her.

"Babe, wake up," he said, not wanting to scare her awake. They hadn't exactly passed out under the best circumstances. "Jennifer-"

Too late. Her eyes snapped open and her fist came up, connecting squarely with his cheek. He grunted, canteen flying from his hand.

"Dammit!" he snapped.

"Oh fuck, Jack! I'm sorry!" Jennifer said, sitting up, reaching out. "Shit, babe, I'm so sorry. I just, you know-"

"I know," he replied, sitting back up, rubbing his cheek. "It's fine. We're safe. We're at Mars City, in a storage room, and Sanders there is helping us out."

She looked across the room at him, then looked around the storage room. "How bad is it here?" she asked flatly.

"Sanders?" Jack asked.

"I don't see how it could get much worse," he replied morosely.

"Oh, it can always get worse. We've got light and air and heat," Jack replied.

"Ugh. Yeah. Good point."

He returned a moment later with a crate that he'd thrown a bunch of stuff into. Jack looked through it, finding all the things he'd asked for. Well, except for the guns, but those could wait. Though not for very long.

"Got any rags? Soap out of the question?" he asked.

"I'm not sure...why?" Sanders replied, getting back up and moving over to the crates again.

"In case you hadn't noticed, we're fucking filthy and we reek. I'd love to even get a basic wash in," Jack replied.

"Oh."

In the end, after the two of them tore through what food there was, Jack helped the man sort through the crates while Jennifer stood and went to the table, which, he saw, had a small arsenal on it. Emphasis on the word small. After a bit, he managed to produce a single bar of soap and a pair of rags. Moving over to a relatively unoccupied space of the room, he and Jennifer each took canteens of water and used them, the rags, and the soap to wash up. They did it as quickly as they could and then dried off with a few more dry rags. Once that was done, they pulled on fresh uniforms, underwear, socks, boots, and all. Jack felt like luck was finally with them for once.

And, of course, he felt like the other shoe was getting ready to drop, and drop hard.

"Tell me there's some kind of command structure," Jack said as he finished lacing up, then joined Jennifer in looking at the armory again.

"Technically, yes."

"Technically?" Jennifer asked.

Jack took a hip holster, attached it to his belt, and then checked out one of two pistols. It was in good shape, loaded, functional. He holstered it and pocketed two more magazines of ammo for it, then looked over what was left. Just an SMG and a shotgun.

"Which one do you want?" Jack asked.

"Shotgun," Jennifer replied.

"Fair enough."

She grinned at him and kissed him. "You're a sweetheart. Fuck flowers and chocolates, I'll take this over those any day."

Jack smiled back stupidly at her, not sure what to say. He'd been decent with casual flings, but he still hadn't really figured out how to handle genuine affection like this. He also hadn't felt like this about anyone before. Even the relationships he'd considered serious, he hadn't felt about them as he felt right now about Jennifer.

"Thanks," he said finally. There was something he should say, but now probably wasn't the right time. Was there a right time?

He took the SMG. "So, chain of command?" he asked.

"Master Sergeant Kelly is still running the show from Marine HQ. It's not too far from here," Sanders replied.

Jack checked over the SMG ammo. Just three magazines. Sighing, he loaded the gun up and pocketed the rest. "And forces? How many Marines do we have? How many civilian survivors?" he asked.

"Less than a dozen Marines, last I checked. And I'm not sure anyone else is alive."

"Christ," Jennifer whispered.

"We need to get to Kelly. We've got a hell of a lot to report in."

"Come on. I'll take you there," Sanders said, making for the exit.

They followed after him.

* * *

Jack had always feared that something would have happened to Mars City, ever since Carmack had told them that there was a portal between Hell and it. But he felt almost certain that it was ridiculous, there was no way they'd be so stupid as to let something like this happen. Then again, he was dealing with the UAC, and a bunch of burnouts, rejects, and pariahs from the Corps. The only good thought he had was that least there weren't going to be any awkward questions. Well, not yet at least. He hoped Kelly was an on-the-ball kind of guy.

He supposed he'd have to be, to still be alive and running things.

"What were you doing out here?" Jack asked as they hurried through the corridors.

The place looked awful. The walls were dented and sprayed with blood. There were bodies spread out everywhere, spent shell casings carpeting the deckplates, mixing in with the pools of blood. It must have been an utter slaughter.

"Making a repair, actually. There was another guy with me, a tech. We needed the tracking system back online, so we could get a better idea of who's left, and all it needed was one repair. We got jumped by a bulldog though, he didn't make it."

Jack didn't need to ask which one was a bulldog.

"Sorry," he said.

"Me too," Sanders replied.

As it turned out, Marine HQ really wasn't all that far away. They slipped down half a dozen corridors, through a pair of mess halls, and finally came out to the area in front of the HQ. Jack hardly recognized any of this. There were bodies everywhere, absolutely everywhere. Zombies, Z-Sec, Imps, Demons, and some Marine bodies mixed in as well, but it looked like the Corps had struck a major blow against the forces of Hell here.

Spent shell casings literally carpeted the floor.

"Damn," Jack said as Jennifer let out an appreciative whistle.

The door to Marine HQ suddenly opened up. "Who goes there?!" someone called out.

"It's me! Sanders! And I found some survivors!"

"Dammit, Sanders, you're supposed to call us on the fucking radio. I almost blew your fucking head off."

"Sorry, I lost it. We got jumped by a bulldog and...Wells didn't make it."

A pause. "Shit. All right, come on, hurry up."

They hustled across the sea of corpses and came in through the reinforced door, which the man closed and locked firmly behind them. It was unreal, being here again. He remembered reporting here when he'd first arrived on Mars. God, how long ago had that been? Less than a week. It was less than a week ago.

That seemed impossible.

They found Master Sergeant Kelly seated at his command post, looking pale, miserable, and bleary-eyed.

"You two," he said, looking up. There were barely over half a dozen other Marines in the command center. "I know you...holy shit, you went up to Phobos. How in the hell did you two manage to get back here?" he asked.

"You want the short version or the long version?" Jack replied.

"Short version. All we've got time for. Gather round, Marines! I imagine this is going to be one crazy fucking tale," Kelly called.

Jack spun it for them quick.

"We hit Phobos Base and found it in much the same condition as Mars City is now. We got separated, reunited, killed our way to Command Control and Phobos Labs, and basically figured out there was no way we were leaving or calling for help, because there was a signal blanketing the moon preventing such things. And it was coming from Phobos Anomaly. We killed our way there and ended up getting sucked through to Deimos. We kicked our way across that moon and eventually got to Doctor Carmack, who let us know that on the far side of Hell, there was a portal that would take us here. We crash-landed in Hell and kicked our way through eight goddamned different areas across the region, and killed the biggest fucking demon you ever saw."

"Fucker was twenty feet tall," Jennifer said.

Jack nodded. "And then we got here. And we lost a lot of good men and women along the way...a lot of good Marines," he finished quietly.

"Goddamn," Kelly muttered.

"You believe them?" one of the Marines asked.

"Yep. Look at them. I can just tell you've been to hell and back." He sighed heavily. "Well, I'm sorry, but I am glad you're here. We're at the end of our rope."

"What's been happening?" Jennifer asked.

"For frame of reference, it's been three days since your squad went up to Phobos," he said. "About a day after that, that's when everything went to hell. From what I've been able to piece together, that portal you were trying to come through to get here just turned on and demons came out. They were everywhere. We fought like hell, but there were hundreds of them, seemingly no end to them. I did manage to get a distress call out, we stabilized the nuclear reactor and kept it from blowing, and by the end of that first day, Bravo Team, the brave men and women you see around you, successfully led a mission to blow up the portal."

"So, wait, the portal is destroyed? And there's not another one?" Jack asked.

"Yes, and as far as we can tell, yes."

"I wonder how the hell we got back here then."

"Luck, probably," Kelly replied. "Unfortunately, it didn't stop them. We've seen some of them just pop into existence, teleport in all their own. We tried an evacuation, but like you said on Phobos, the ships don't work. We were lucky to get that distress call out. The past twenty four hours...they've by far been the worst. What you're looking at, with one exception, is every living human being left on Mars." He looked around the room.

"So it worked? You used the scanners?" Sanders asked quietly.

"Yeah. Confirmed it. Just us and that asshole."

"What asshole?" Jack asked.

"There's a scientist we found at the far end of Delta Labs. Saw him through the security network. He's locked himself inside one of the specimen chambers. Genius, actually. Place is built like a vault. We've got a line in to the room, but he won't answer. He must know something about this, he's pretty high up in the science department."

"So we go get him," Jack said.

He'd about had it with scientists lately.

"Yeah, see, that's the problem. There's about half a dozen brutes roaming around Delta Labs. They're between him and us. I sent in about half of Bravo and the other Marines we had and it didn't exactly work out."

"Brutes?" Jack asked.

"About nine feet tall, horns, throws balls of green energy," one of the Bravo Marines, a big guy that looked like he'd been through a lot, said.

"Ah, we call those Barons of Hell," Jack replied.

"That's way cooler," Sanders said.

"We don't have any other options," Kelly cut in. "I can't see any other way of finding some way to stop this mess. This guy is our Hail Mary. Either he's got the answer or we're fucked. With you two here, I think we might have a shot."

"All right, we'll do it," Jack said, looking at Jennifer, who nodded tightly. "We're going to need a team and access to an armory."

"There's still one in fairly good condition we hit beforehand," the big Marine said, stepping forward. "I'm going."

"Guess I will too," Sanders said.

"I can only spare one more," Kelly said, looking around. "We need to keep Marine HQ secure. McNeil, who goes?" he asked, looking at the big Marine.

"Pavel," he said. "You're with us."

"Good. McNeil...I know you're the ranking Marine, below me, but I'm putting these two in charge. I think their resume speaks for itself."

"I'm fine with that," McNeil said. There was a weariness in his voice, an exhaustion. Jack knew how he felt.

"I don't suppose there's any spare armor around here?" Jennifer asked. "All we have is these uniforms."

"At the armory," McNeil replied.

Jack sighed. "Then let's get to that armory. I want to get this over with," he said.

McNeil nodded tightly and led them out of Marine HQ.


	40. EPISODE 01: Mars City Outbound

It was unreal to be back here in Mars City, to be viewing the same level of devastation here as he'd witnessed on Phobos and Deimos. Jack was a pessimist, although really, given how shitty things had turned out, he'd called himself a realist, but somewhere, in the back of his head, he had somehow allowed himself to believe that Mars City was a safe zone, untouched by the horrors of hell. Why? Why had he believed that? Why had he _let_ himself? Probably because he hadn't even realized it, because he'd gotten too good at thinking about 'right here, right now'. But no, here he was in a corridor of dented metal and smeared blood, with a pair of bullet-riddled bodies and a carpet of spent shell casings for company.

Well, that and some fellow Marines.

Despite everything, despite the deaths and the horror and the exhaustion, it did feel genuinely good to have some real backup. They must be as exhausted as he was, but McNeil, Pavel, and Sanders all moved with a solid military precision as they navigated the bloodied, chromium corridors of the city. McNeil was leading the way.

Jack moved up alongside him. "What's the quickest way to the armory?" he asked.

"There's a big transitional area up ahead, that's the most direct route. The only problem is that every time we've gone through there, it's attracted a lot of attention," McNeil replied.

"We can handle it," Jack said.

"I suppose so. So...you really made it through Hell?"

"Yep. Hell and back. Or whatever that other dimension is. It sure looks like Hell, bad enough to be it, but...I'm not so sure. I don't think you get a shotgun and a fighting chance in Hell, you know what I mean?" he replied.

"Yeah. Everyone calls these things demons, but...it does make me wonder."

"What they really are. I think they might be aliens. Or maybe even genetically engineered creatures." He shrugged. "In the end, I don't think we're ever going to find out, but does it really matter? They're obvious not friendly, and are going to engage us in a fight to the death, and we can kill them without too much trouble."

"You raise a good point," McNeil said. "The transitional area is up ahead."

"Get ready, Marines," Jack said, slipping his finger inside the trigger guard of his Raptor SMG. He missed his plasma gun.

They got up to the door that served as ingress into the next area. Jack and McNeil got up on either side of it and, once the others were in position, he hit the access button. Waited a second. Nothing happened. Waited a few more seconds. Nothing continued to happen. Jack poked his head and SMG out and saw nothing, just a big, empty, two-story room with lots of doors. "Clear," he said as he stepped out.

McNeil followed him, as did the others in a strung-out line. They split up, each covering different portions of the room. Jack came to stand near the center of it, scoping the area out, waiting for something to happen, but it seemed like they were actually in the clear. "Which door is it?" he asked to McNeil.

"That one, up there," he replied, pointing.

"All right, Marines, let's-"

He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence as an Imp issued a hissing shriek and a fireball came at him from the ceiling. Jack jerked aside, looking up, wondering where the hell it had come from, and spotted it. The thing was hanging from inside a broken out vent shaft. He jerked his gun up and fired, spraying a burst of red-hot lead at the awful thing and splitting its head open. He sidestepped as it lost its grip when it died and fell out of the vent, slamming heavily into the deckplates in a spray of dark red blood.

That seemed to signal the attack.

Most of the doors in the area opened up to admit new horrors: zombies, Demons, more Imps. Everyone opened up on the living wave of horror as it attacked them. Muzzle flare lit up the area, monsters roared as gunfire sounded and blood sprayed across the chromed, UAC-stamped walls. He put a trio of shots into an Imp's screaming mouth, then adjusted aim and put a round through one eye of a decaying zombie that had once been a technician, switched targets again and emptied the rest of the magazine into a Demon.

By the time had slapped a fresh magazine in, Jack realized that they'd stemmed the tide of monsters. He looked around to double-check, and saw that, yes, they were alone. Well, damn, it was nice to have a five-person team.

How long would that last? He wondered.

They finished reloading and hurried up the stairs, then through the door McNeil had indicated. Down another pair of dented, blooded, flickering corridors and Jack found himself standing in front the door to the armory. It wasn't until he looked in through the bulletproof window and saw the familiar figure of a suit of armor that he suddenly remembered he was without armor. God, he was glad he'd forgotten, or else he would've been a lot more nervous back there. Well, either way, he was going to get a suit of it now.

"Kelly granted me executive access," McNeil said as he waved his PDA in front of the security scanner. It chirped and turned green. The door slid open. "Figured it would be a lot easier that way," he added.

"Definitely," Jack agreed.

They all headed into the armory and secured the door behind them. McNeil had been right: the place was pretty ransacked, but not totally. There were two sets of Combat Armor, beautiful green Combat Armor that looked fresh and polished and ready to be put to strenuous use. Jack and Jennifer quickly pulled these on, and then set about joining the others in hunting for weapons and ammo. He managed to find a stack of ammo for his Raptor, a shotgun with a lotta shells, and a big, shiny silver chaingun.

It was no rocket launcher or plasma rifle, but it would do.

He loaded it up and found two spare big, yellow boxes of bullets, as well as another backpack to put it all in. Unfortunately, he was the only one who had a more substantial weapon. Here was hoping they found something better on the way over.

"Now where?" Jack asked as they left the raided armory.

"Tram station," McNeil replied.

"Oh. Nice. There were a lot of trams up on Phobos and Deimos. They were fairly sturdy," Jack replied as he followed after the big Marine once more.

"This one has yet to fail us," McNeil said. "It isn't too far from here. The hardest part is going to be Delta Labs itself."

"We'll be ready for it," Jack replied, hefting his chaingun.

McNeil just grunted. Jack supposed he could appreciate how the man felt, and hey, he was probably right. Maybe they weren't ready for them. Barons of Hell were certainly terrifying, but after seeing the spider queen, and the Cyberdemon...well, your sense of perspective changed. The five of them made their way through Mars City as quickly and quietly as they could, grateful to avoid any further confrontation. Everywhere he looked, Jack spied some new atrocity. A half-chewed torso, a trail of blood leading up to a broken-open vent grate, a decapitated head, at one point he saw about ten corpses stacked like firewood alongside a bulky piece of machinery tucked away into its own dark niche in the wall.

How many?

How many had died?

At least a thousand, he figured that much. Between Mars City, Phobos, and Deimos, and whatever operations they might have had going on in the other dimension when this all went down, at least a thousand people might be dead. Or turned into zombies. God. What a fucking nightmare. They at least managed to make it to the tram station without a problem. Jack felt a strong sense of Deja vu as he got onboard the tram and helped McNeil secure it. It was clean, basically untouched, vacant. And in proper working order.

Pavel silently assumed the role of conductor and got them started.

As they moved out through the airlock, Jack moved over to join McNeil at one of the windows. The vibrantly red landscape of Mars began to drift by. "You know," McNeil murmured as he reached into one of his pockets, "I used to think that Kelly was crazy." He came out of his pocket with a crumpled pack of Yeheyuans and a lighter. He offered one to Jack, who took it immediately. Both men raised their visors and lit up.

"Why?" he asked.

"I thought the guy was paranoid. Hearing things, seeing things. Ghosts, bullshit, rumors. Nothing happened in the whole time I was up here. And I've been here for almost a year. There were rumors, but there's always rumors, especially with some freaky-ass corporation up on Mars, away from prying eyes. I just wanted to keep my head down and make some money."

"Why'd you get sent up here...if you don't mind my asking?" Jack replied.

He shrugged. "I lost my nerve. Got some good men killed. It was a bad situation. A bad time. You?" he replied.

"Went against the grain of command. Saved some lives."

McNeil snorted. "Way better than me or most of the people here. But anyway, I guess that's why he's Sergeant Master and in charge of Mars Security. He knew what was up. Well, he knew _something_ was up. He's the reason any of us are even still alive at this point. He tried to manage everything from minute one of the outbreak. If we'd had ships...or some kind of warning...a lot more people would still be alive. Now there's not even a dozen of us. You sure there's no one up there on those moons?" he asked.

"Sure about Phobos and Deimos, yeah. We ran checks. I mean, unless someone got outside of the range of the scanners, but those are pretty far-reaching. As for Hell? Shit, I dunno. I mean, we came across some survivors, but they were all so far gone we had to mercy kill basically every last one of them. There could be people still alive there...God, I hope not."

"Yeah, me too," McNeil muttered grimly.

Jack left him smoking and moved over to Sanders, who was talking quietly with Jennifer. "What's up?" he asked, sitting down with them.

"He was just telling me about the invasion," Jennifer replied. She shook her head. "God, we thought it was bad up on the moons. There were families here, Jack. There were fucking kids here. And they're all dead now. I suppose the only real consolation to all this is that the UAC pukes who did this are dead, and hopefully they went out as painfully and brutally as Carmack did. Fucking assholes," she muttered.

"Yeah, it was pretty bad," Sanders said quietly. He heaved a sigh. "I only hope we can stop it here. I mean, we can't really save anyone _here_ at this point, but if it gets out...if these things somehow find their way to other places..."

He trailed off, not finishing his sentence, but they all knew what he was talking about. Earth. If they made it back to Earth…

Jack didn't even want to think about it.

"We're arriving," Pavel called from the front.

"Let's get this done," McNeil said, tossing down his cig and crushing it beneath his boot. Jack did the same and lowered his visor.

The tram cycled through the airlock, and came out into a tram station of destruction. Lights flickered overhead, a body hung half-off the platform, tools and spare parts were scattered across the metal plating, mixed in with blood and severed limbs. Two people, skinned, hung from the ceiling via lengths of cabling.

"Okay," McNeil said. "We tried this before. We have the route memorized, the shortest way there. It's just a matter of actually _doing_ it."

"I'll lead the way," Jack said. "Just guide me."

They headed out of the tram. Jack now had the chaingun in hand, warmed up, locked, loaded, and ready to straight up fucking murder. The five of them moved across the wrecked platform and came to the exit. Jennifer hit the open button and the doors slid slowly open. One of them juttered to a halt halfway, spat out a stream of sparks, went a few more inches, then died completely. As he moved through the opening, Jack came to an utterly destroyed airlock that led to an equally devastated security checkpoint.

They moved slowly and carefully through it, coming at last to the entrance lobby. As they stepped in, Jack jerked in surprise as an intercom clicked overhead. _"Welcome to Delta Labs. Please, follow all safety regulations, and enjoy your stay."_ It began to go on to say something else, but cut out abruptly. Jack rolled his eyes. He hated automated messages.

"Which way?" he asked.

"We're heading left. Follow the corridor to its end and turned left again," McNeil replied.

Jack moved on. The squad left the lobby, boots squelching loudly in the blood, and listened intently for signs of life. This place seemed to have been hit harder than everywhere else. It was darker here, bloodied, seemingly every surface dented or damaged in some way. This must have been the point of origin of the invasion. There were a lot of body parts around: he saw some hands, several arms and legs, a few heads.

God, it was a slaughterhouse.

The corridor was long and there were a lot of cross-corridors and rooms. He peered in through every window or open door as he passed, seeing if anything was hiding out. So far, it was a whole lot of nothing, just empty offices and disorganized storage areas mostly. A few labs. One open door led to a ridiculously bloody bathroom. Where were these monsters? Where could the Barons possibly be hiding? The longer they went without confrontation, the more worried he got. It was obvious that Delta Labs was a big place.

They reached the end of the corridor without incident, turned left, and kept going.

"Now where?" Jack asked.

"Sixth door on the right is another short corridor, then that'll take us there," McNeil replied.

Jack took a step into the next hallway and heard a roar that he'd become all too familiar with recently. One of the doors to the left burst open in a shower of metal and sparks, and a Baron of Hell burst into the hallway. Its head nearly brushed the top of the ceiling. Damn, these fuckers were _huge_! Jack raised the chaingun as it wound up to throw a ball of green plasma. He didn't give it a chance, as he'd kept the barrels spinning.

The barrage of bullets chewed into the Baron's chest, sending it stumbling backwards. He ended up emptying half the magazine into the thing, spraying its blood in all directions and sending it flying backwards. It crashed to the deckplates thunderously and became still in a widening pool of deep red blood.

"Well damn," Sanders muttered.

"Don't get too cocky. We had a chaingun too," McNeil murmured.

They waited to see if something would happen and, sure enough, they heard another roar from somewhere nearby, down the corridor, the way yet gone. Heavy footfalls began to sound. Jack kept the barrel spinning, aiming. The corridor they were in terminated in a T-junction. The Baron appeared from the right side and Jack walked forward, opening fire as he did so, and emptied the magazine, sending the big bastard to join its brother.

"So far, so good," he said, going through the long process of reloading the chaingun. One of the drawbacks.

Once that was done and it was obvious that no more beasts were coming for them, they finished their journey. Well, this part of it. The final corridor terminated in a huge steel door, built like a vault. Jack moved up to the terminal next to it. "How do we talk to him?" he asked.

"Here," McNeil said, stepping up as well. Jack let him work. A moment later, he had it working. "Whoever's in there, open up."

There was a long pause. Finally, the comms crackled in response. _"I'm afraid not. It's too dangerous. I've been tracking your progress though the city's internal security grid. Why have you come?"_ a voice responded.

"We need help. We need to know if you know how to stop this mess," Jack replied.

Another pause. _"I've been working on that exact problem. Listen, I'm still trying to figure things out, but there's something you can do that will help immediately. I'm sending you a program and a location. At the location is a portal scrambler. It's just a prototype and it won't last all that long, but it should buy us enough time to pull this off. Once you get there and initiate the device, then kill off at least the remaining big demons, come back here, and I should have everything worked out, and then I can help you put a stop to all this."_

"So you _do_ have a way to stop this?" Jack asked.

" _I believe so."_

"That's kind of vague."

" _I'm aware. The sooner you get this done, the better."_

"Fine," McNeil growled. He pulled the information off of the terminal, studied it, grunted. "Great, other side of the labs," he muttered.

"Let's get this over with," Jack replied miserably.

They started trudging back.

* * *

They managed to make it back to the lobby area and through the right-hand doorway without running into any trouble. In fact, they made it about halfway down the next corridor before it happened. Jack had been waiting for 'it', but it was so unspecified, this feeling general foreboding, that when the Baron of Hell stepped out of an offshoot alcove about twenty feet away, he almost felt relief. He could deal with this.

Then he heard a growl coming from behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder, Jack saw that another one had appeared at the head of the hall. How had it done that!? Had it teleported in? Wouldn't they have heard that?

"Shit," McNeil said.

"Fire!" Jack called, leveling the chaingun and squeezing the trigger. The gun spoke, spewing an array of bullets at the Baron, but he heard someone shout a warning and then there was an explosion of hot pain along his back that sent him crashing to the deckplates, the chaingun flying from his hands. The Baron he'd been fighting had only taken a few rounds, and threw a ball of green energy as well. Jack scrambled for the chaingun, managed to get it up as he heard the others shouting and firing, trying to deal with both threats.

Down on one knee now, he aimed and fired again, and this time he poured enough rounds into the big demonic bastard to put it down for good. He turned around just in time to see Jennifer fire off a blast from her shotgun that hit the second monster right in the eye. It stumbled backwards, tripped, hit the floor with a thud that shook the area, flopped and jerked for several seconds, then was still. They all waited, listening.

Several spent magazines clattered to the floor.

"Damn," Jack groaned. "How's my back?" he asked.

"Armor's all black and kind of cracked, but it looks otherwise intact," Jennifer replied. "Does it burn?" she asked.

"No. It was really hot at first, but it's just a little warm now. Not like with my shoulder," Jack muttered.

"Two more of the big bastards down," Pavel said.

"You know, this is bugging me," McNeil said as they hurried on. "How in the hell do we have a portal scrambler? How much do we _know_ about this?"

"Too much, or, well, depending on how well we can handle this, not enough. Maybe too much of the wrong stuff, not enough of the important shit," Jack replied.

"That sounds about right, given how fucked up everything has been so far," Jennifer said.

They jogged on down the corridor, took a right, ran down its full length, wondering where the other two Barons of Hell were, but wherever they were, they weren't close enough to stop them before they reached the lab that held the portal scrambler. Jack stepped in, chaingun at ready, and found himself staring at a huge spike of black and silver and gold and purple metal plates covered in strange circuitry and glass bulbs and odd metallic protrusions. It was in the dead center of the room, rising towards the ceiling, perhaps fifteen feet tall, the ceilings in here higher. Everything seemed to be centered around it.

"What the f...what _is_ this?" Jack whispered.

"Next objective on the checklist," Jennifer replied. "McNeil, what next?"

"Now..." he muttered, jogging across the room to the biggest workstation, built on a raised dais at the back of the room, overlooking the rest of the area. "I plug the program in here and it does its thing, however long that takes."

"Great..." Jack looked around, he could feel something on the air, some tension that hadn't been there before, more physical than before, almost like a static charge before a really bad storm. He hoped it didn't take very long.

"Okay, we're golden! It's working!" McNeil called.

"Hey, McNeil...how in the hell do we turn these on?" Jack replied. Something had caught his eye, and looking up, then around, he realized that there were more than one of them. Drone guns. Automated assault weapons, hanging from the ceiling like inert, metal wasps. "Cause that would make me feel a whole hell of a lot better."

"Oh shit, I didn't even see those," McNeil muttered, returning his attention to the workstation, working it furiously.

The feeling of tension was only getting worse, more powerful.

He looked up suddenly. "Uh...I can't activate them. There's a short...there!" he said, pointing. Across the lab was an exposed panel, sparks shot out of it. "Pavel, install a bypass."

"On it, boss," Pavel replied.

A great hum suddenly filled the room. Jack looked around, terror gripping him, the bad thing was happening…

There was a brilliant green flash that briefly overloaded his vision.

As it came back, he looked around frantically, chaingun at ready. His eyes fell on the huge, burly figure of a Baron.

It was standing directly behind Sanders.

"Sanders!" he began, raising the chaingun. The Baron of Hell pulled its hand back, roaring furiously, and sparked a ball of green energy, conjuring it from apparently thin air. It threw it point blank into the back of Sander's head.

It took his skull clean off.

All that was left was a cauterized stump of a neck.

Jack screamed as he opened fire, gunning the demonic horror down with the remainder of his magazine. "Pavel, go!" he screamed as he reloaded, going as fast as he could. "Jennifer, McNeil, protect the workstation!"

Jack secured the final box of ammo to the chaingun right as another green flash burst across his vision. Gunfire exploded, Pavel was running, a Baron had popped into existence about ten feet to his right and had its fiery, murderous sights set on the man. Jack leveled the chaingun and emptied half the last magazine, putting it down in a spray of bullets. Another green flash, then another one, and a third. That one was high up.

A Cacodemon. No, two.

And two more Barons of Hell. This was quickly becoming unacceptable. Jack emptied out the chaingun putting down the nearest threat and then dropped it. Pavel was clear for the moment. A shadow passed overhead. Jack brought his SMG out and aimed straight up, squeezing the trigger and emptying the entire magazine into the Cacodemon as it sailed over him, apparently intent on killing Pavel. Did they know? How could they know? Were they listening? This was definitely bad. He slapped a fresh magazine in, let the gun hang from its sling, and pulled out his shotgun. Another Baron was stomping directly towards Pavel.

Jennifer and McNeil were doing the best they could, opening fire from the raised dais, but they were dealing with another Cacodemon and a quartet of Imps that had just teleported in. Shit! The Baron was close. Jack threw together a plan and before he could think better of it, he ran forward, put himself between Pavel and the Baron, shoved the shotgun into the thing's mouth and squeezed the trigger. The top of its head burst like a ripe melon and, with stunning clarity, he saw the way its curving horns flew in opposite directions, one of them actually dislodging from the head. It sailed through the air and clattered to the floor.

Then the Baron's fist, which had been mid-flight when he'd pulled the trigger, hit his chestplate. It was a glancing blow, but even a glancing blow sent him stumbling backwards so hard he fell flat on his ass, and found himself staring up at another Cacodemon.

"Fuck!" he snapped.

He pumped four shells into the big red bastard and then rolled out of the way as it popped, trying to avoid the visceral spray of its blood and guts. As he tried to get to his feet, he heard a loud whining noise and then the deafening sound of four mounted machine gun turrets firing overwhelmed him and he wondered if they would be able to differentiate between humans and demons. So he just waited for whichever outcome.

Apparently, he didn't have anything to worry about.

When the guns stopped firing, a loud thrumming filled the room. Jack opened his eyes, realizing that someone was standing over him. Jennifer. She was offering him a hand. He took it and she pulled him roughly to his feet.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, can we get out of here? This thing is giving me a migraine," he replied.

The four survivors stepped back out into the corridor after he grabbed his chaingun. "So, I take it it's working?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's on," McNeil replied.

"Good. Now-" He paused as his radio crackled to life.

" _Good work, Marines. Now I need you to secure the area. I'm not opening the door with these things still roving around. I'll guide you, there aren't that many left. Then, once they're dead, please return to my area post haste."_

"Yeah, we'll get right on that, doc," Jack muttered.

They set off.

* * *

There was a Baron of Hell, a half dozen Imps, three Demons, and a few Lost Souls hanging around. They cleared them all up as quickly as they could, and then got back to the vault-like door. This time, the good doctor opened up the door for them. Jack led the way into the room and immediately felt a chill settle over him. The room was a sterile environment, seemingly untouched by the invasion, but also as immaculate and well-lit as a surgical bay. Lining the walls to either side were large, square glass containers embedded in the white-tiled, UAC logo-stamped walls, some full of a greenish liquid and, in a few cases, bodies.

He saw a pair of Imps and what looked like parts and pieces of a Demon.

There were workstations in front of these containers. All of this was lorded over by another raised dais sporting a big, fancy, curved workstation, behind which the doctor sat. He was a slight man, hidden mostly in his labcoat, a pair of glasses with round lenses perched on his nose, his thinning black hair beginning to turn gray.

"My name is Doctor Fielding," he said almost absently, working the controls. "I'm very grateful that you have arrived. It might be fate. I have figured out how to fix this...I think. But there is no way I'd ever be able to enact it myself."

"Fine. How do we do it?" Jack asked. He was hungry, and thirsty, and his whole body was hurting at this point, and he was dead fucking tired.

He wanted this done.

"I managed to piece together information from all the archives. I've got access to everything now. They divided up the departments, compartmentalized knowledge, piecemeal. So no one knew too much. I can see that you are eager to resolve this, as am I, so I'll spell it out for you. You, and as many as you can muster, must go into Hell once more, via a teleporter here, locate and then kill the leader, the mastermind behind this whole operation. Our basic research indicates that they are being...not exactly controlled, but focused, by a single entity. If you find and kill this entity, this mastermind, then that will leave them broken, give us time to regroup. I know its location, a region we marked for exploration based on primitive maps of the region we discovered during one of our previous expeditions. They called it Dis," Fielding explained.

"That's great and all, but how do we _get_ to Hell?" McNeil asked. "We destroyed the primary portal."

"There is an auxiliary portal. It isn't activated right now. That will be your first task: reactivate a pair of emergency generators to give it power. Unfortunately, I cannot teleport you into Dis. We don't have the coordinates for it. The closest I can get you is a place called the Warrens. I know that you will at least have to travel through two more regions: the Fortress of Mystery and the Halls of the Damned. We did preliminary scouting of those regions, and we believed that we might have located the portal to Dis, or at least the portal to the location that has the portal to Dis. So you will need to get me access to a server that has the teleportation coordinates of the Warrens so I can fire it up and send you through. Then, well, you know the rest."

"Fan-freakin-tastic," Jack muttered.

"Good luck," Fielding said.

Jack turned away from the man, too tired to be angry, and activated the radio. "Kelly, Ward here. We've got a plan." He ran through a brief description of it.

" _...well, okay then. I guess it'll have to do. Get me the locations of those generators, I'll send a few over to deal with one of them while you deal with the other,"_ Kelly replied.

"On it," Fielding said.

Jack shouldered his shotgun. "Let's get this over with."


	41. EPISODE 01: Gathering Darkness

Jack was beginning to wonder if he was actually approaching his limit.

When he'd been going through Basic training, he had reached it. More than once. That was kind of the point. You get to know yourself, how far is too far, where your threshold lies, so that you can push yourself, move beyond it. And that taught you to _keep_ pushing yourself, to keep expanding your limit, so that you could triumph in crazier and crazier situations. And God knew that the world had enough of those nowadays.

But this…

This was beyond the pale of anything anyone had ever realistically expected. This was beyond the lunatic fringe.

But Jack _did_ have a hard limit, a point at which his body or his mind would just...give out. Either one of them or both of them would simply have _enough_. Honestly, he was amazed that he was still going as strong and as focused as he was. But his hands were shaking from time to time, his vision was going blurry every now and then, and his mind was starting to wander. These were all signs that he was headed towards a death sentence, because a split second often made all the difference in life or death situations.

And that went like...quadruple here.

He needed another break, his body was breaking down, but there was just no time. He never thought he'd find himself missing the boring routine his life was settling into when he'd first arrived at Mars City. Hell, even Phobos seemed fairly decent compared to everything that had come after it. But at least he still had Jennifer, he thought, looking over at her as they stalked through the bloody, chromed corridors of the ruined city. And he had backup. Real Marines. They had a fighting chance to put an end to this.

Well, sort of.

More like, they had a half-assed maybe that might work.

"Have McNeil, where did you see action?" Jack asked suddenly, wanting to be talking about something, anything really.

"All over," the Corporal replied. "Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Estonia. Fought briefly in that campaign for Antarctica."

"Oh shit, you were down there?" Jennifer asked. "I remember hearing about that. It was like a media frenzy for about two months. I never actually figured out what the hell was going on with all that," she added.

"There was this treaty signed back in the nineteen fifties basically stating that Antarctica would only ever be used for scientific research. Slowly, more and more countries signed the treaty, and those that didn't basically adhered to it anyway. By twenty one ten, pretty much everyone had signed. The thing is, there's a lot of oil under Antarctica. That scientific treaty stopped anyone from drilling. Well...some countries started getting desperate. And then there were talks about revising the treaty, as there were still some countries that really relied on oil and natural gas and such. And in the midst of these treaties, basically, a small army was discovered trying to set up a quick and dirty mining operation and everything kind of went crazy for a little bit. The conflict lasted like three months, I was only there for a week before I got rotated out, but man it was _so_ fucking cold down there. Crazy fighting too. Miserable place to fight," he replied.

"It really sounds like it," Jack said.

"Doesn't hold a fucking candle to this place, though," McNeil muttered. "What about you Pavel? Where'd you fight?"

"Russia, a lot. Syberia, mostly. Japan, during that two week conflict with the Brazilian transplants. Bosnia. Did a quick stint in Ecuador on loan from the Russian government," he replied.

"Oh shit. Russia. How's that civil war going?" Jennifer asked.

"Dunno, really. Stopped keeping up with it. Last I'd heard, and this was a year ago, the new government was winning. But it changed all the time." He shrugged.

Something growled up ahead, the sound echoing to them down the battered length of the corridor stretched out before them. Jack tightened his grip on the shotgun and felt that familiar adrenaline surge. Battle was near. They weren't too far from that first generator now. He hoped the other team was having good luck. The quartet reached the end of the corridor, which opened into a transition room with several doors.

"Through there," Jack said, indicating the first door on the right.

There was another growl, this one deeper, closer. As Jack stepped into the next room, he froze, listened, waited. The room was long, low, and dark. The central space was a natural alcove created between large pieces of dark-metaled machinery. Steam hissed from overhead pipes. Jack sighed quietly.

What a lovely fucking place to spend his time.

"It's here?" Jennifer groaned.

"Yeah. Should be in the back of the room," Jack replied.

He took point, moving very slowly, taking care to check the niches all around him: both sides and even the ceiling. He had the flashlight mounted on his shotgun on, the pale beam illuminated the nest of shadows surrounding them. Bit by bit, they revealed nothing but dark metal niches between the machinery, and occasionally a chewed corpse surrounded by a lot of blood. Jack could no longer hear any other sounds beyond that of himself and his own team, and the machinery surrounding him. Definitely not a good sign.

They inched down the corridor, seconds ticking by, becoming minutes, until finally they reached the end of it, coming to a T junction. The right had a door and the left terminated in a wall. They continued down the left hand side and finally found their auxiliary generator, through the door, in its own room.

Jack started to head forward. "Okay-"

The floor abruptly gave out beneath him and he screamed in shock as he free fell for a split second and crashed onto something hard and twitching. He heard a wild shriek and several surprised hisses and was violently thrown off of the Imp he was sure he'd landed on. "Fuck!" he snapped as he raised his shotgun and fired almost blindly. The shell clipped the Imp nearest to him as it tried to get back on its feet, hitting its neck and sending it stumbling in a spray of blood. He adjusted the barrel, cocked the gun, fired again.

This one blew a good portion of its skull off.

All around him, the area began to light up with a hellish orange-red glow. He could just barely make out the inhuman faces of perhaps a dozen Imps surrounding him, and started firing while simultaneously trying to get back to his feet.

"Hold on!" He heard a heavy clang and suddenly a shaft of light appeared, further illuminating the area. Jack opened fire, putting a shell squarely into the open mouth of an Imp across the room as they all began hurling their fireballs. He managed to dodge most of them, firing back, but a few smacked painfully into his armor, the heat transferring through the thick material. Though it was nowhere near as bad as the Baron of Hell attacks. He emptied the shotgun as someone overhead rained down death from above, and together, they killed the Imps.

"You okay down there, babe?" Jennifer asked.

"Just fine," he replied, then groaned quietly as a wave of hurt rolled through him. The armor was tough enough that a ten foot drop like this shouldn't've done much more than rattle him. But his body had already been put through the wringer. "Get the generator work," he said, popping his neck slowly. "I'll make sure there's nothing else down here."

"Let me know if you need any help," Jennifer replied.

"Believe me, I will."

The lower section, really just an extension of the area above, housing more mysterious machinery doing whatever it did to keep Mars City on life support, wasn't all that big. He checked out all the shadowy niches and natural alcoves between the darkly humming equipment, and found nothing. Finally, he located a ladder that led to a hatch. Opening it, he found it let out in the generator room. By the time he was up and out, they had it on.

"It's working?" Jack asked.

"Yep, fully powered and switched on. We're solid," McNeil replied.

"Okay, see how the other team's doing," he said as they began backtracking. Jack had taken some time to study the information Fielding had passed to them. He had a rough idea of how to get to both the other generator, in case of emergency, and the mainframe room where the coordinates to the Warrens were being kept. As they made their way back across the area, he heard McNeil curse and stopped, turning around.

"What?" he asked.

"They're under attack, need help at the second generator," he replied.

"Shit," Jack snapped, turning on his heel and taking off in another direction. "Let's go!"

The four of them raced down a large corridor littered with crates and bodies and more of those damned toxic waste barrels. A few of them had tipped and spilled, and he had to jump over those, not wanting to step in the awful, glowing green crap. He thought he'd left all those things back up on the moons, but evidently not.

A Z-Sec zombie raced around the corner at the end of the hallway. Cursing sharply, Jack raised the shotgun and fired, putting a slug shell through its black visor and putting it down. He sprinted on, not even stopping, knowing that every second he wasted here, it put someone else's life at risk. Another Z-Sec stepped out and he didn't even get a chance to put it down, as a spray of SMG fire came from behind him and took the thing in the helmet, killing it. Jack jumped over the body, hit a crossroads, and broke left.

A Demon was waiting for him at the other end, and as soon as it caught sight of him the big, stupid monster began stomping towards him, roaring hungrily. Jack fed it three shells and watched the back of its head blow out in a spray of dark, pulpy gore. He blew past it before it even hit the deckplates. Jack began to hear gunfire and shouting, and knew they were close. Those two sounds were ones that he was intimately familiar with, but they'd been seemingly nonstop since he hit Phobos. At last, they came to the second generator room.

This one was a bit more open and better lit, a large, low rectangle of a room with several points of entry. Jack spied a few things as he blew away a pair of zombies on the way: there were two survivors, duking it out with a living wave of Demons, Imps, and zombies, and there was a fresh corpse on the floor. Another casualty on their side.

"On your six!" he roared, emptying his shotgun once again, taking down two more Imps with a neck shot and a chest shot, then he was letting the weapon hang and grabbing his SMG. He took up position next to one of the Space Marines, who looked just the same as they all did in that moment: a grim, bloodied figure cast in heavy green enviro-armor. That's what they all were, right now. Probably what they would be for some time to come.

Jack wondered if he could ever hope to any kind of normal life after this.

He very much doubted it.

The sound of gunfire, of SMGs rattling and shotguns booming, filled the air, fighting for dominance with the hissing shrieks of the Imps, the groans and shouts of the zombies, and the roaring of the Demons as they pressed into the room and were met with red hot lead. Jack emptied his SMG, slapped a fresh magazine in, emptied again. As he reloaded a second time, the last Demon fell and there was silence.

One of the other Marines that they had rescued was the first to speak. "Fisk is dead." A woman's voice, numb and miserable.

"Fuckin' Christ. Fucking demon shits," the other Marine snarled. He walked over to a relatively intact Imp corpse and fired a slug shell directly into its head, obliterating it. "You want some more!?" he roared, then kicked the corpse.

"Quit wasting ammo, Williams!" McNeil snapped. "Get your head in the game." He turned to look at the other Marine, the woman. Her nametag red **PFC Miller, G**. "Miller, are you or Williams injured?" he asked.

"Negative," Miller replied quietly.

"I'm fine," Williams groused.

"Fine. Ward, let's find the generator. Everyone else, field search, gather up whatever ammo you can from these dicks," McNeil said.

There was a general round of affirmative responses, and they got to work. Five minutes passed in relative silence. Jack and McNeil managed to track down the generator. It was intact and functional, and they had it fired up immediately. They then locked the door to the small room it was in, hoping to keep it safe for long enough to do their thing. Jack suddenly wondered if they would be able to get back.

Well...there was a good chance this was a one-way trip anyway.

Jack reloaded his shotgun and took another eight shells for it and another two for the SMG, basically making the battle a zero sum game.

"Master Sergeant Kelly," he said, "we've turned on the two generators. Fisk is KIA. We're heading for the mainframe room. Over."

" _Shit. We've been getting hit here again kind of hard. I'm going to need some backup if I'm going to keep this place secure. Over."_ He sounded on edge.

"Affirmative, Master Sergeant," McNeil said, glancing briefly at Jack, as though asking for permission to take over this particular part of the mission. Jack nodded his assent. McNeil knew these people better than he did. "I'm sending Miller and Pavel back to reinforce you. Ward, Taylor, Williams, and I will continue on. Over."

" _Good. Thanks."_ A shotgun blast. _"Out."_

"Double time back to Marine HQ," McNeil said to Miller and Pavel.

"On it," Pavel replied. Miller just nodded tightly. The two of them hurried out of the room, back the way they'd come.

"Let's go," Jack said. And they headed off yet again into the chaos of Mars City.

* * *

"Okay, Fielding, we're at the mainframe room. What now? Over," Jack reported, looking around the large, messy, office-like area. There hadn't been too many demonic jerks on the way over, and he'd been grateful for that.

" _You're going to want Mainframe B Seven. It should be in the far left corner. Find it, tell me its condition,"_ Fielding replied.

Jack sighed and headed that way. There was something about the doctor that grated on him, but it was probably just his nerves, already rubbed raw and painful by everything else. And probably the fact that he would find it hard to trust scientists ever again after this. But that was stupid, even in his current state he could see that, one major fuck-up didn't mean they were all evil or incompetent. Really, it was the UAC's stupid-ass greed and impatience that had no doubt caused this catastrophe. Jack found the mainframe he was looking for.

"It's intact," he said. "No power, though."

He sighed. _"Of course not...Corporal McNeil, would you head for the nearest terminal and grant me executive access to this room? This will go much smoother if I can handle this part of the operation,"_ Fielding replied.

"Fine," McNeil replied, crossing the room and firing up one of the workstations. He spent a silent minute doing as requested. "Done."

" _Perfect. Okay...shunting power to the mainframe...good, it's on and functional. Now I'm hooking into the internal communications network. Hmm. Okay, good. Damn, the network's in pretty shoddy condition. This might take a few minutes. I need you all to stay there and make sure nothing happens to that mainframe for the next...five minutes,"_ Fielding reported.

"Fine," Jack replied.

He just fucking _knew_ that meant that there was going to be a firefight. And, of course, he was right. Hardly sixty seconds later, there was a tremendous bang on a large silver door across the room. The squad quickly moved into position, taking cover behind some of the sturdier pieces of equipment in the room, though there wasn't a lot to work with. Another bang sounded, then a third. The door jumped off its tracks.

An enormous fist punched straight through the metal, then retreated. A pause, then a large, hideous, bloodshot eye stared through the hole. It disappeared, and whatever it was, (Jack figured it had to be a Baron), roared furiously. That's what the door basically flew open, physically detaching from the wall and landing heavily on the floor, crushing a few desks in the process. Indeed, a Baron of Hell stormed into the room.

And it had brought friends.

Behind it was a small army of Imps, backed up by some Lost Souls. Jack's stomach went cold. They hadn't dealt with Lost Souls in awhile. Fuck, his chaingun was dead, too. "Take down that big bastard!" Four barrages of bullets converged on the Baron of Hell as it roared and began hurling green balls of energy at them. Jack narrowly dodged one and then finished emptying his SMG into the thing, rattling through the rounds as fast as his gun would allow. The Baron of Hell began to look bloody and torn up within seconds.

He reloaded and put another half-magazine into it, and that toppled it. In fact, it crushed an Imp as it fell backwards. That was the good news. The bad news was that now the room was flooding with Imps and Lost Souls.

"Take out the flying skulls!" he called, and aimed for the little floating bastards. They were creepy as hell, that weird hissing shriek they made when they came for you. One was coming right at him. He aimed and fired, putting a slew of rounds into it and reducing it to so many free-flying bits of bleached bone. He ducked a fireball, finished off his magazine by putting down another Imp. He abandoned the SMG and pulled out the shotgun, since it was honestly tailored for this kind of work. He aimed, fired, aimed and fired.

Two more Lost Souls went down. Three. Four. An Imp that got too close for comfort. The demons had numbers, but the Marines had speed, training, and tenacity. Jack was almost positive that they were going to make it without a problem.

And then a Lost Soul slipped by them as his shotgun ran dry for the second time. No time to reload, he pulled out his pistol, turned, tracking it, and then screamed a warning. The Lost Soul was dive-bombing straight for Williams.

The poor bastard never stood a chance.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. Williams had been firing into an Imp, turned slowly at Jack's shouted warning, his helmet coming into direct line-of-sight with the screaming skull as it dove straight for him, and he began to scream, to move, but there was no time, and the Lost Soul went straight through his visor without so much as a crack. The man dropped his weapon, grabbed his helmet, ripped it off and threw it against the wall hard enough to shatter the glass faceplate. Began screaming. He dropped to his knees, hands on his head.

Jack began to steel himself to do what needed to be done as he watched blood begin to well up from beneath the man's squeezed-shut eyelids, begin to come out of his nose, his ears, his mouth. But a shotgun blast sounded and Williams's screams were ended abruptly, clipped off brutally by a slug shell that took half his head off. Jack turned to see McNeil's flat, flinty gaze on Williams's corpse, then he turned and fired again, popping an Imp's head. There was more work to be done, but not much. Jack helped McNeil and Jennifer mop of the rest.

" _Okay, I've got it,"_ Fielding said suddenly, after the curtain of silence that always seemed to descend after a frenzied battle fell. _"Hello?"_

"Fine, doc," Jack replied quietly. "What next?"

McNeil silently began to move forward, coming to Williams's body and crouching there. Started patting him down for ammo.

" _The teleportation device is working. You're going to need to gather up whatever you can carry. I'm forwarding you the coordinates on the device. And one more thing: I've found a note here. The UAC had apparently feared something like this might happen, and about just a week ago, they secured a top-secret, experimental, ultimately powerful weapon in Hell. In the Halls of the Damned. I'm forwarding you the intel on that as well. They thought it might be useful against whatever mega-creature might be masterminding this invasion."_

"Good. Great. Fine." He paused, called up Kelly. "Master Sergeant. We're ready to go. Williams is KIA. Over," he reported morosely.

" _Aw, shit."_ Kelly heaved a long, lethargy-laced sigh. _"Well, I guess this is it. All cards on the table time. It's obvious that it's this or nothing, so I'm sending everyone with you. Doctor Fielding and I will remain behind to try and coordinate with anyone that shows up, and wait for you to return, and maybe try to figure out some way to stop this if you fail. I'm loading up Lynch, Miller, Bennet, Pavel, and Jackson, and sending them all to meet you at the teleporter."_ Kelly paused for a long moment. _"Get it done. And come back alive. Out."_

Jack looked at Jennifer, at McNeil. They stared grimly back, their faces pale and gaunt, their eyes bloodshot, darkened, haunted.

Silently, the three of them began to head for the teleporter.

* * *

They didn't run into much trouble on the way to the teleporter. It seemed that the local forces of Hell had exhausted their immediate supply of living nightmares, which was fine by Jack. He felt like could sleep for a thousand years.

The teleporter looked smaller, and much more...human, than either of the Anomalies or anything else they'd run into in Hell. Just a simple half-circle of metal sticking upright out of a silvery disc about twelve feet wide.

A flat, shifting curtain of some strange black energy gathered in its center.

Jack stared at each of the survivors, at Jennifer, at the remnants of Bravo Team. Mars City's, and possibly even humanity's, last line of defense. He wanted to say something, and they looked like they expected him to.

He couldn't think of anything.

In the end, he said, "See you on the other side," and stepped through the glowing portal, disappearing into a wall of seething darkness.


	42. EPISODE 01: Back To Basics

When Jack snapped back into reality yet again, he immediately felt much lighter. Looking down at himself, he felt a wave of cold terror sweep over him, but it was immediately extinguished and replaced by a far more powerful burning rage.

"Oh you _stupid fuck!_ " he screamed, staring down at his own naked body.

The armor. The guns. The ammo. Everything.

All of it was gone.

"What in the fuck is the point of being a fucking goddamned genius if you're going to be such a goddamned fucking _moron?!_ " he shrieked in pure white-hot rage. Why hadn't that dumbass mentioned that they would lose everything in the transition?! Why hadn't he remembered to ask?! Jack looked around, clenching and opening his fists rapidly, looking for something to take his frustrations out on. The idiot had even suggested they gather whatever resources they could before going through the gate! Why? WHY?!

He'd appeared in a simple square room of green marble and pockmarked gray stone, nothing in it but a wooden door ahead. Jack marched forward and smashed his fist into the big red button set into the wall next to it. The door slid open. A hallway, lit by flickering torches in black sconces along the walls, was revealed. A pair of zombies stumbled around and let out loud groans as they caught sight of him, then began stumbling his way.

Jack lunged forward.

He wrapped his hands around the pallid, half-decayed stumbling former human's neck, whirled around, and threw it back the way he'd come. Letting out a scream of effort, he sent it stumbling and falling to the floor. The second zombie groaned and reached for him. "Oh shut the fuck up!" he screamed, punching it in the temple and sending it lurching away. He hissed in pain, it was like hitting a fucking wall.

But that just pissed him off more. He grabbed the thing's skull and slammed it into the wall, then did it again and again and again until he heard something crunch wetly and a spray of darkened gore escaped its head and it stopped struggling. He dropped it and began to turn around when he felt a hand on clap down on his shoulder. It was as lifeless as marble. Normally that would terrify him, but right now his blood felt like it was on fire. He spun around, grabbed the thing's wrist, yanked it forward, and brought his elbow down on its forearm.

The bone gave with a wet snap, but _fuck_ did it hurt!

Most of his right arm went numb. That took some of the fight out of him. Pissed off and in pain, Jack used his left palm to smash the zombie's nose in, driving the shaft of cartilage up into its brain, piercing it and killing it instantly.

He'd had to kill more than one guy like that.

As the body slumped to the floor, Jack got his breath back, wincing as he rubbed his arm and looking around. Now that his anger was slowly bleeding away, he realized that he was exhausted. He looked at the two corpses he'd made, then looked down the corridor, the way yet gone. Something growled, out of sight. He sighed and knelt, patting down both bodies to see if they had anything useful on them.

All he found for his troubles was a combat knife.

Well, it was better than nothing. Some semblance of sanity began to return to Jack as he padded down the corridor, naked and bloody and holding a combat knife. It looked like it was back to basics. He had to find clothing, armor, weapons, a radio, medical supplies, and, most importantly, his team. He was in Hell again. He found that a little hard to believe, not that it was necessarily unbelievable, but that he would ever willingly go back. Looking around, smelling the air, he had to wonder if maybe he was a little crazy.

But what choice did he have?

They had to be stopped, and he and the others were the only ones to do it right now. There was no sense counting on someone else to finish the job. At this point, was there honestly anyone more qualified? If there was, he felt terrible for them. Jack shook his head as he reached the end of the corridor and came in a low room with weird green brick pillars to either side of him. "I'm so sick of this shit," he muttered, raising the knife.

He moved slowly down the room, eager to just get the hell out of Hell, or at least just _find_ someone. Even one other person would be great. Although it'd be nice to get some clothes first. Something shifted off to his right. Jack froze, knife ready, staring into a deep nest of shadows in between a pair of pillars. A light sprang into being, an awful flickering crimson light. It illuminated the basic outline of an Imp.

The thing hissed and threw the fireball at him.

Jack narrowly avoiding it, gritting his teeth as he felt the burning agony of its passage along his right bicep. Knowing that he had to end this, and fast, he rushed forward, knife raised. The Imp shrieked in response and clawed at him. An explosion of pain ripped down his chest but there was no time for that. Focusing everything into one hard thrust, he shoved the knife into the Imp's open mouth, feeling a fresh wave of pain as some of its teeth caught on his skin, cutting into his hand and wrist. He shoved the blade through the back of its head and then yanked his hand back right as the thing snapped its jaw shut, barely avoiding losing his hand.

He looked at the Imp as it fell to the floor, twitching and shrieking, spraying blood every time it opening its mouth.

It slowed, then became still.

Jack felt a fresh wave of pain spider out from his chest and looked down, hissing in agony as he saw two cuts across his flesh that was bleeding pretty badly. "Fuck," he muttered, and he'd lost his knife to boot. Sighing, he slapped his hand over his chest, wincing again, and jogged on to the end of the room, seeing another door.

Well, there was nowhere else to go, so he went. Jack felt a chill begin to settle in as his anger faded and the reality of his situation started manifesting. He was alone, naked, completely unarmed, in Hell. That was going to have to change, and fast, because he intended to kill this mastermind demon and go home with Jennifer and as many other comrades as possible. He didn't know how realistic this intention was, but he didn't really care. Over the past few days, Jack had done a lot of unrealistic things.

He'd like to keep that streak going.

The door opened into an oblong room where the ceiling came to a bizarre point off-center to the right, the walls made of strange black marble shot through with flickering red veins, and the floor was made of that bright puke green brickwork. There were several open doorways. Off to the left, he heard gunfire, a pistol.

Jack began running towards it, desperate for another survivor. He skidded to a halt as he came to the open doorway and peered around. A short corridor of more green and red brick awaited him. He hurried down it, seeing the muzzle flare.

"Friendly, incoming!" he called.

The gunfire fell silent, then he heard a moan, two more shots, then silence.

"Jack?"

Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Jennifer!" he called, coming into a room with an open ceiling and a river of toxic green sludge running through the center of it. She stood on his side of it, lowering the pistol, just as naked as he was.

"Thank fuck," she whispered, stepping over a dead body and wrapping him in a hug. He hugged her tightly back. "I was getting a little worried."

"So was I," Jack replied.

She seemed to notice his wounded chest suddenly. He followed her gaze. "Imp," he said.

"We need to find a medkit," she murmured. Then, perhaps realizing there was nothing else to be said or done, she turned and pointed. "That zombie had a pistol on it."

"Thanks," he replied, jogging over and crouching the zombie corpse she'd produced. "What's through there?" he asked as he inspected the pistol, indicating the only other door in the room, across the narrow acid green.

"Nothing worth mentioning. It's where I teleported in," Jennifer replied. She scowled. "Would've fucking been nice to know."

"Yeah," Jack muttered. The pistol was fully loaded, no spare magazines though. "There's a few other ways I found back down that little hallway. Have you seen anyone else?" he asked, leading her back out.

"No, no one," she replied.

"Great."

They came back into the room with the strange ceiling. There were just three other ways he had yet to go, one at the far end and two more across from him, in the right wall. They moved through the first of the two doors, passing through a frame of some strange black, mottled wood. They made sure to check the face of every body they passed, praying that none of their own were counted among the dead. And, of course, every uniform they came across was too shredded, bloodied, burnt, ripped, or otherwise damaged to wear.

The first door led to just a single room that showed some signs of UAC: a sparking, broken terminal attached to one wall of green brick, a few empty boxes, and one lonely metal chair that was covered in blood.

The next door, however, yielded something worthwhile. Though they had to kill a Demon to get it. The two of them strode in, pistols at ready, and found a Demon munching on an Imp carcass. The dumb thing hadn't even heard them. They opened fire on its broad back and it issued a roar, spun around, and began stomping towards them. Jack ended up emptying his pistol putting the thing down, but he wasn't overly worried as he saw that the room it had been guarding was a little more well-stocked. "Thank God," Jack muttered, looking around.

There were some crates and tables around, and they weren't completely empty. Although, as he looked through the supplies, he saw that they actually didn't have all that much to offer. No uniforms, no armor, just a few more magazines for the pistols. Sighing, he reloaded, then, after a moments' consideration, finally stuck the magazine in his mouth.

"This sucks," he tried to say.

"Uh-huh," Jennifer replied, as she'd ended up doing the same thing.

No pockets fucking sucked.

They almost left, but Jack spotted something behind one of the crates. It looked important. He crouched and fished it out of its hiding place. A PDA. The screen was cracked, but it fired up when he turned it on.

"Found something," he said, setting the magazine and pistol aside for the moment on one of the tables. Jennifer did the same as she joined him, though she held onto her pistol. They studied the screen as he tried to navigate the menu. He tried to open a few audio and text files, but they were corrupted. Eventually he managed to coax a map of the area out of it.

"Doesn't look like this place is too big," Jennifer murmured as they studied it. He could see that they'd already covered a little over half the area between them so far. That didn't exactly inspire confidence, as they hadn't run into anyone yet.

"There's a UAC outpost up ahead," Jack said. "Bet there's more supplies there."

"Yeah, and someone might've found it already. Good rally point."

Jack wanted to take the PDA with them, but really it didn't serve all that much of a purpose, as the map was fairly easy to remember. So he left it, grabbed his gun and magazine, and they headed out. The pair moved through the main room to the final door and opened it up. And heard more gunfire. The boom of a shotgun. Well, someone was having better luck than they were. At least in terms of finding a bigger arsenal.

They came into a much larger room, this one turned into an uncomfortable battlefield by more of those pillars and stacks of huge silver, UAC logo-stamped crates spread seemingly at random across the warehouse-sized room. They quickly tracked the source of gunfire to its point of origin, calling out a warning as they came down a natural alcove created between two big piles of crates. They heard one more resounding shotgun blast, then all was silent.

"Who goes there?" whoever it was asked.

Jack recognized the voice, but couldn't place, not with his ears still buzzing from the gunfire. "Ward and Taylor," he replied, taking the magazine out of his mouth.

They came around a corner and came into a 'room' created by the crates where Pavel stood, naked and bloody, breathing heavily as he reloaded the shotgun, surrounded by half a dozen dead Imps. "You made it," he said quietly as he finished reload.

"Yeah, have you seen anyone else?" Jack asked.

Pavel sighed, knelt, and began searching through the area for supplies. There were a few dead zombies around as well.

"Yes. Bennet. He didn't make it. Demons got him. There really isn't anything left anymore," he replied quietly.

"God...I'm sorry," Jack said.

"So am I. What about you?"

"No, just each other."

"Then we must find the others."

"Yeah, and some armor," Jennifer said.

Pavel nodded and finished his search. "There's a UAC outpost up ahead," Jack said as they made their way out from the small area between the crates.

"Ah, the way yet gone," Pavel replied. "I was just heading for that door when I was attacked. It and that door," he said, pointing back the way they'd originally entered from, "were the only two places I haven't already searched."

"We came from back there. Nothing worth mentioning," Jack said.

They moved up to the last door in the area and opened it up. The trio of hell-stricken survivors were given a view of another open-ceiling room, the walls and floor made of gritty red and black stone. The room seemed to be an antechamber, and from what Jack remembered of the map, the door to the left led into the outpost, while the door dead ahead led into the final chamber that should house the way out of this place, granting them access to deeper parts of Hell. They moved over to the left door, a large, silver thing also sporting the UAC emblem, and hit the access button. And then Jack found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

"Oh shit, sorry," the person on the other end of it said, lowering the weapon. Miller, that distant, quiet female Marine he'd met briefly before, stood just inside the doorway. "I thought I was the only one left," she said quietly, stepping back.

"We're it," Jack replied. "Where did you end up?"

"In the final chamber, with the teleport," she replied. "Barely survived. Managed to get this shotgun from among the dead before a group of Imps tried to jump me. You're injured. Here. There's a small infirmary through here."

She turned and began walking away. She was already in uniform, looking fairly well put together, so she must have found a way to clean up as well. Jack could do with a shower. He knew they were luxuries and he should be worrying about other things, but goddamn did they go a long way. The tour of the UAC Outpost was depressingly short. Just the room they'd first come into, which served as a kind of security and command center, a small mess hall with a bathroom and a pair of bunks off the sides of it, an armory, and an infirmary.

There was, mercifully, a small cubicle shower in the infirmary.

The three of them worked quickly, tending to their wounds after taking turns in the shower. While they did that, Miller brought them uniforms, boots, and holsters. Jack tended to his various wounds after and almost painfully hot shower that felt like a slice of paradise in this fucking nightmare. The cuts on his chest weren't as bad as they'd seemed, really they just stung like hell because of how much he was sweating. But he got them cleaned and patched up, as well as a few other cuts and scrapes he'd accumulated so far, and then pulled on the uniform. Once he'd holstered his pistol, he stood up, popping his neck, and felt…

Felt like he was dead on his fucking feet.

"Shit," he whispered, sitting down heavily in one of the chairs.

"Are you okay?" Miller asked as the others dressed.

"Yeah, I just...I'm exhausted. I don't know how much longer I can go on for."

"Same," Jennifer muttered.

A look of reluctance suddenly came across Miller's face. "I might be able to help, but...I'm not sure if it's a good idea," she said.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"I found some adrenal packs, hardcore stimulants." She turned and retrieved something from one of the few cabinets in the room. Jack studied the thing as she set it down on an examination table between them. It was a black metal case with an ominous red plus sign on the front. He immediately recognized it.

"Berserker pack," he muttered. "I've seen this before. They pass them out on extended combat assignments. God, they're pretty hard on the system, but they're supposed to make you amped up for hours, make you stronger, faster..."

"And then you crash after," Jennifer said.

"I've used these before," Pavel said, staring at the black case.

"They _are_ dangerous, but..." Miller hesitated.

"But can we afford not to take them?" Jack asked. He came to a decision almost immediately and stood up. "All or nothing," he said. "We're the last hope as far as we know. We _have_ to get this done, no matter the cost."

The others must have agreed with him, because when he unlocked and opened up the black case, they each reached in and grabbed one of the little clear syringes. All four of them looked at each other with baggy, bloodshot eyes that stared out of haunted faces, then they each injected themselves. The effect was immediate.

It was liquid fire. Power.

All of his lethargy, his exhaustion, hell, even his worries, were banished in an instant. He took a breath and felt like he was exhaling flames.

"Let's fucking do this," he said, dropping the syringe. From their wide eyes and sudden fast, sure motions, Jack could tell they felt the same way he did now too. They left the infirmary and did a quick sweep of the rest of the Outpost. He and Jennifer each found a new weapon: shotgun for him, SMG for her, and some ammo to boot.

With the Warrens cleared, McNeil, Lynch, and Jackson still missing, and everything on the line, they moved into the last chamber and began teleporting out.


	43. EPISODE 01: Fortress of Mystery

As he came through the teleporter, snapping out of existence in one hellish room and back into it in another hellish room, Jack thought that he would never get used to teleportation. And, to be completely honest, he didn't intend to, because he didn't intend to do this any more than necessary. Shotgun firmly in hand, he stepped off the rusted red pad of ancient metal, (briefly wondering what the hell it was that made them function like that), he quickly scoped out this latest slice of Hell he found himself coming into.

As he expected, it was ugly, though not nearly as much as it could be. He stood in a roughly octagonal room, and there were broad openings in each section of wall surrounding him. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of the same pockmarked, dirty gray stonework. It actually reminded him of a cave, despite being artificial. Or maybe it had grown this way. Who the fuck knew in a place like this? He saw a door dead ahead of him.

And then he saw movement.

Ahead to the left _and_ to the right, in two of the shadowy niches surrounding him. He heard a growl, no, more than one growl. And they were _deep_. And horribly familiar. Jack looked slowly around himself.

"No..." he whispered, paralyzing terror stealing over him.

The shadowy niches were beginning to light up with a flickering hellish yellow-orange light. To his left, his right, behind him…

"No..." he groaned, trembling violently now.

Six Barons of Hell stepped forward into the light, and roared.

"No! No! No!" Jack screamed, turning and firing almost blindly at the nearest Baron of Hell. The slug shell hit it in the chest, drawing blood, ultimately being about as meaningful as a bug bite on an elephant.

There was a green flash behind him.

"Jack, what's- _OH MY FUCKING GOD! WHAT THE FUCK!?_ " Jennifer screamed.

Jack's eyes locked onto the wooden door dead ahead of him. He had to get to it. "Move!" he screamed, jerking to the right to avoid a ball of green energy. He nearly walked right into another one. He began running towards the door, dodging and ducking and weaving, screaming the whole way, his brain operating almost purely on autopilot. It helped that he'd just taken that damned injection because if there was ever a time he needed a pickup, it was right the fuck now. He ran smack into the door and nearly fell onto his back.

He punched the open button, too terrified to even feel the pain of having run into the door. There was another flash of green light (nearly indistinguishable from the green glow of the half-dozen Baron's attacks, only discernible by its brightness) and then he heard Miller issue a terrified scream. No time to worry about that now, he had to get this damned door open and find some kind of fallback because holy _shit_ there were so many of these fuckers!

"Here!" he screamed, ducking to get under the slow-moving door. Why, out of all the fucking doors they'd run into, was this one moving so slow?!

He began to call to the others again, but his words died on his lips as he started in stark horror at the room beyond. It was a large, open room, octagonal like the previous room, although this whole area was bathed in some strange white light. The floor had grooves cut into, each one leading into the center. They were all filled with blood.

Easily the worst feature of this room was that there was a small fleet of something like ten Cacodemons floating in the air. All of them were slowly turning to regard him with their huge yellow eyes. All at once, they began issue a strange hissing sound and started coming towards him. Jack turned back around and saw Jennifer and Miller still rushing towards him, and behind them Pavel snapped into existence, looked around, and screamed.

Then a green ball of hellfire scorched directly overhead. Jack heard an angry roar come from behind him. Spinning back around, he saw that the thrown projectile had smashed into the face of one of the Cacodemons.

Inspiration struck.

"Hide! Hide in the niches!" Jack screamed, grabbing Jennifer and pulling her with him off to the right, in one of the unoccupied spaces. He saw Miller and Pavel sprint off in random directions. He heard the strange sound of the Cacodemons firing off their balls of yellow-red flame from their mouths, and heard the Barons start to roar in fury. He and Jennifer got into the shadow of the small area they'd been running towards and looked back out, weapons at ready. He half expected to see a Baron coming in after them.

If that was the case, they'd be fucked.

But that wasn't the case. He did indeed see a Baron, _three_ of them, actually, but none of them were facing his way. They were all facing towards the door he'd opened. He saw them throwing green energy as fast as they could, and from the barrage of fireballs smacking into their huge, muscular bodies, the Cacodemons were going to war. Trembling with adrenaline, Jack still felt a huge surge of relief.

For a second there, for a few, it had looked like they might really be facing their death. That had become fairly commonplace since this whole thing began, but facing down six goddamned Barons was an entirely different story. Jack found himself reflecting, as he listened to the furious roars and marrow-freezing screams of pain and rage, that they had been stupidly lucky so far. Not all of them, obviously, but considering the fact that they were, each time they stepped onto a teleport pad, basically taking a leap of faith, they had gotten very lucky. Which made him wonder: what, exactly, was waiting for them further down the line?

Was this an anomaly? Or a portent of things to come?

God, he hoped it was an anomaly.

He stood there with Jennifer, both of them with their backs to the far wall, standing stock-still, weapons aimed towards the entrance. He prayed that the others had made it to safety as well. They watched one Baron fall, then a second one. A trio of Cacodemons floated into view, pushing the others back. Two of them were popped by the green balls of flame, then the third was forced back. This war raged on for a solid ten minutes until finally, after what seemed like far too long, all was silent. The sudden silence was somehow louder than the battle.

"Now what?" Jack whispered, and jumped at the sound of his own voice. It had been a little bit since he'd so thoroughly stared down the barrel of death.

"I guess we go look," Jennifer said softly.

He nodded, but he didn't want to leave the relative safety of the niche. Right now, it felt like his entire universe. But the silence persisted, and they had to keep going. They couldn't just stand there forever. So they ventured forward, moving together, and came to stand in the entrance, staring out into the room beyond.

It was a slaughter.

"Good God," Jack whispered.

There was blood and guts and corpses everywhere. Scorch marks had been imprinted on most of the walls, and even the ceiling. Out of all the monsters, there was only a single survivor: a badly damaged Baron of Hell stood in center of it all, swaying. It turned to regard them and sneered. Half of its face had been burned away. Almost without thinking, Jack raised the shotgun and pounded out a round even as the Minotaur-looking bastard began to wind up for its own attack. The shell went right into its mouth.

He watched the back of its cranium burst in a spray of pulpy gore.

The Baron of Hell crashed to the stonework floor.

"Nice shot."

They both looked over. To their left, they saw Pavel emerging from his own niche. "Goddamn, that was crazy," he muttered.

Jack nodded. "Miller?!" he called. "Where are you?"

"Here," she said, and they saw her coming out of another niche across the room. She surveyed the damage, the death, the destruction. "God, I can't believe we all survived that."

"Yep," Jack replied, then hesitated as he took a moment to look over it all. He saw a bit of pale skin. Human skin. "What the...who's that?" he asked, his stomach going cold. Whoever it was, they were at the back of the room. The four of them converged on the body. It was a man, lying on his stomach. Jack carefully flipped the naked body over. There was a huge hole and burn mark in the middle of his chest.

"Jackson," Pavel said quietly. "Well, at least we know what happened to him."

"He must've teleported in here, instead of the Warrens, and one of the Barons got him straight out the gate," Jennifer murmured.

Jack stared at the man's anguished face for a few seconds longer, then slowly stood. "McNeil and Lynch are still missing," he said. "Come on, we have to keep going."

The others followed after him.

After confirming that there were no other exits and nothing worthwhile in the initial room they'd started in, the quartet of hell-stricken Marines moved into the next room where the Cacodemon armada had once resided. Now that he wasn't going crazy, Jack got a better look at the room. Same crappy pockmarked stonework as before, and those grooves cut into the floor, four of them in total, each leading diagonally away from a pool of blood in the center. They drew the blood out and disappeared beneath the walls.

There were three exits.

The one dead ahead was the one they wanted. Unfortunately, it was locked. Between two thick bars of steel running up and down, one trimmed in blue, the other in red, he could see the teleporter. He saw a slot on either side, built into the wall, meant to take skull-keys. He sighed. "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us," he muttered.

"Yep. Let's get to it," Jennifer replied.

They broke left first.

The left door came led to a long hallway of corroded red brick. As they made their way down it, Jack thought it strange that there were no more hostiles around. Well, he'd take what he could get. After all that crazy ass crap, he felt that they deserved a damned break. He studied his other two new teammates as they made their way down the corridor. He'd gotten to know Pavel a little bit already. "Miller," he asked, "what kind of action did you see back on Earth?"

"I was in Iceland, mostly," she replied. "When those eco-terrorist...cultists, I dunno, whatever they were, when they tried to take over the damned country. Did a stint in Malta, too. Before, well...you know," she said.

"Yeah, before the bomb," Pavel muttered.

"I was just leaving when it happened," Miller murmured.

"Really?" Jennifer asked. "How close?"

"Close," she replied. "Transport almost went down. Did anyone ever find out who did it?"

"I'd heard that it was an accident, actually," Pavel said.

"An accident?" Miller asked.

He nodded gravely. "Yes. I had some friends in intelligence. Nothing was ever proven, but I was told, under the table, that they were screwing around with some kind of high-yield explosive. God knows why."

"Good lord," Jack whispered. "That's a pretty awful situation..." He shook his head. "What, um...why are you up here? I mean, if you're okay to talk about it."

"I am," she replied. "I was kind of rattled after Malta. My older brother's higher up the food chain so he ended up getting me papers to get transferred here. I...thought a year in space would help clear my head, calm me down." She snorted. "God, was I wrong."

"To be completely fair, almost no one could have predicted this," Jack replied.

She sighed and nodded. They came to the end of the corridor, turned, and move down another one. There were a handful of zombies wandering here, but none of them were armed, nor were they dangerous. The squad put them down with quick headshots all around. They found the blue skull-key resting on a pedestal at the end of this corridor, pocketed it, and retraced their route back to the original room. Finding no more demons had showed up in the meantime, they make their way through the other doorway and down another hallway.

"So, here's a thought," Jennifer said suddenly. "Every time we transition between our universe and this fucking place, we lose _everything,_ right?"

"Correct," Jack replied.

"So how in the _fuck_ did the UAC manage to get all these fucking people and supplies and outposts through!?"

"I...don't know," Jack murmured. "That is a _really_ good question."

"I've been thinking about that," Miller said. "Ever since I saw that little outpost. I obviously don't know one way or the other, but I'm guessing that something changed when the invasion hit. They did something to the gateways, or maybe it's just a natural phenomenon, or maybe it was an accident, an unintended side effect. But _something_ must be different."

"That makes sense," Jack said. "Good thing we don't have to recover anything from this place. All we've gotta do is kill."

"And kill we shall," Jennifer muttered darkly.

As they put down a handful of Imps and found the second skull-key, Jack still couldn't shake the feeling that they were getting off easy. Something bad was headed their way. Or, really, they were headed towards something bad. What had masterminded all of this? What was behind the invasion? What was controlling them all?

Well, they'd find out soon enough.

And hopefully they could find that top-secret weapon somewhere ahead.

They fell back to the main room and slotted both of the skull-keys. Each of the steel pillars rose into the ceiling as they did, revealing the teleport pad.

Resisting the urge to cross himself, Jack stepped aboard.


	44. EPISODE 01: Halls of the Damned

Jack nearly stepped into the waiting arms of an Imp. Still cranked out on the berserker shot, he raised his shotgun and blew the thing's head off almost without a second thought. Twisting as he heard a roar and stomping footfalls, he fired a second and third time, spraying Demon blood all over the place as he put a shot into its skull, then another into its mouth. The big, deep pink thing roared its death cry as it smashed to the floor.

A fireball smacked into his back. Feeling a shot of fury hit him, Jack stepped further away from the pad as he spun around, aimed and fired once more. The shell took the Imp that had gotten the drop on him right in the neck and effectively severed its head from its body. The body took a few stumbling steps to the left as blood sprayed out of the stump in a huge fountain, then collapsed a few feet away from where the head had hit the floor and rolled. Breathing heavily, he looked around for another threat, but that was it.

For now, anyway.

Jack fed more shells into the shotgun as Jennifer appeared in a flash of light. "Clear?" she asked as she stepped off the pad.

"Clear, for now," Jack replied.

He looked around the room they'd come into. It was a relatively small area of more gray stone. Just two doors, both of them strangely out of place among the gritty masonry, as they were the high-tech sliding UAC doors. He frowned as he spied a pair of zombie corpses over in one corner and moved towards them.

"What is it?" Jennifer asked.

"Not sure," he replied quietly, crouching and studying them. He'd seen hundreds of corpses by now, but he could still pick out certain things. Like the fact that these zombies had been put down with clear precision headshots. And it seemed like the bodies had been ransacked. "I think either McNeil or Lynch was here."

"Well, we're getting closer at least," Jennifer said as she joined him.

They waited for the other two to appear, and once Miller and Pavel had joined them, they moved up to the doors.

"Which one first?" Miller asked.

Jack was getting impatient. "Left. Be ready," he said, moving forward without waiting. He hit the button and the door slid open to reveal a single Demon treading around. It was blown away in hardly two seconds.

The room beyond was about a third the size of the one they'd appeared in, made of red brick, and held nothing of interest. Sighing in frustration, wanting to get on with it, or at least to have something else to fight, Jack moved over to the second door and opened it up. Beyond was a small antechamber of ugly brown metal with just one other exit along the right wall. There were another two corpses, Imps killed by one or both of the other survivors. Jack moved through it and stepped out into the hallway, looking first left, then right.

The way left ended not too far away, opening into some kind of courtyard with pillars and no ceiling. The way to the right kept going, then curved out of sight. He sighed, considered it for a moment. "We should split," he said, looking at the three of them. "We've got three things we're looking for here: our friends, that top-secret weapon, whatever the fuck it is, and a way out. We'll get it done better if we split up." He looked to the left. "There's an acid moat at there...who feels like dealing with acid with me?"

Miller sighed. "I'll do it."

"Fine. Jennifer, go with Pavel. See what you can find over there. We meet back here in ten minutes, got it?"

They all replied affirmatively.

"Then let's get this over with."

Jack wondered how many times he'd said that, or something like it, over the past few days. God, it felt like it was half the sentences that came out of his mouth. He pushed it all aside and focused on the here and now, his blood feeling like it was bubbling, making him antsy to do things, to _fight_ , and he looked out across the open courtyard beyond. He didn't like what he had to look at. Overhead, the skies looked different.

Black clouds rolled over the area and huge, jagged mountains of white and slate-gray rock reached up into the those skies like skeletal fingers. Through breaks in the clouds, though, Jack could see that same shade of red. At least that was consistent. On the smaller scope, he and Miller stood at the edge of an acid moat that was about three feet wide. It ran around the perimeter of a large, square room. The middle of the room, an island in the center of the moat, was a large stone platform studded with rounded pillars.

There were grates in the walls that bled more green toxic acid. He could see another few doors across the room, in an area on the other side of the moats and the island. There were no demonic horrors around, at least.

"God, what the fuck is it with this place?" Miller muttered. "I mean, look at this? What the fuck is this room for? What was that last room for? What's _any_ of this for?! There's no...sense to any of this. It's all just abstract bullshit. I mean, they don't even use the same material. It would be one thing if it was all just stone or wood even, but there's metal in there too, and I can't imagine it's all from the UAC, as some of it looks really old."

"I know exactly what you mean," Jack replied. "This place is just...chaos. It's insane, I think. I have no idea why any of this is the way it is. I mean, beyond the fact that it's a hellish, chaotic environment inhabited by assholes."

She snorted. "Yeah, there is that."

"Okay, we've gotta get over there. Good to jump?" he asked.

She nodded tightly. "Yes."

"I'll go first, keep watch."

"Got it."

He backed up several feet, studying the gap, then sprinted forward and leaped. He landed easily, armored boots slamming into the stone. For a second he was worried it was going to shift or give out beneath him, but it was rock solid.

"Come on," he said, turning back and keeping watch for her. Miller ran and made the jump as well. Okay, so far, so good. They moved across the island of pillars and he checked around each one in passing, half expecting something to be hiding. But there was nothing. Jack could feel his anticipation growing with each silent second. They reached the other side and, upon encountering nothing, each made the next jump.

Now they stood on kind a kind of rectangular deck of stone. There were three doors fitted into the wall ahead of them, two made of wood, the third of metal with the UAC logo on it. He tried that one first, but it was locked. Sighing, he moved over to the left door first. "Get ready," he said, hand hovering over the big red square button.

"Ready," Miller replied tightly.

He hit the button. What was it with them and big buttons like this? The door slid open. A small room of red brick awaited him. The only noticeable feature was that there was a skull embedded in the wall at the back. Frowning, Jack slowly moved up to it. Cautiously, he reached out and laid a finger against it, some instinct making him press inwards. There was a sharp, loud clicking sound and the thing's eyes lit up with strangely technological glowing green lines, almost looking like a circuit board. He stepped back, waiting, listening.

"What did _that_ do?" Miller asked.

"No idea," Jack replied. "Let's keep looking."

They tried the door again, still found it locked, and saw that nothing had changed out in the courtyard beyond. He moved over to the right door now, and found an identical room waiting for him. Jack pushed the skull. This time he heard grinding, and shifting, and sloshing from the courtyard beyond.

"Island's gone," Miller reported as he hurried out to join her.

He growled, seeing that they now had no way back across. The pillars were now partially submerged in the acid, but not submerged enough that they could jump onto the tops of them. He supposed, if push came to shove, they could probably survive long enough in their suits of armor to get back over…

Then again, he had no idea how deep that acid might be in some places, or its composition. It could eat through his suit in a few seconds. "We can't do anything about it now," he said finally, moving back to the central door.

Miller just grunted and joined him. He hit the button again. This time, the door slid open, revealing a small room with a handful of shot-up Imp corpses with an opening into a narrow tunnel at the back. Immediately, he could tell that they were back in UAC territory. Well, probably. It was really hard to tell with places like these. The walls of the corridors were made of more familiar metals with vent grates built in at regular intervals. There was something disquieting about that bland gray metal and the regular rectangular lights overhead.

Jack activated his radio. "Jennifer, you read? Over."

A pause. _"Yeah, I'm here. We're still making progress. Nothing serious so far. What about you? Over,"_ she replied.

"That island is gone now, so we're trapped over here for now. Over."

" _Great. We'll keep looking. Over."_

"Affirmative. Out."

They moved slowly down the narrow corridor. There didn't seem to be any other openings along the walls, floor, or ceiling, but Jack didn't trust it, nonetheless. He took point, shotgun at ready, Miller backing him up. The first length of corridor didn't spring anything awful on him. The passageway ended in a T, more corridors branching away left and right. And now he could see side paths leading off of them. Unsure of where to go, as neither direction seemed better than the other, Jack broke left and pressed on.

He and Miller made agonizingly slow progress through the tunnels. They began, at least, to see more signs of the UAC. Some of the side alcoves led to rooms that had bunks, tables, crates, some actual consoles and terminals. None of which were functional, unfortunately. But it was progress. There were a handful of zombies roaming around, and there was more evidence that either McNeil or Lynch had been through here. They pressed on, checking out the alcoves, listening intently for signs of life on either side of the line.

Finally, the corridor ended in a large room that seemed to be the center of this UAC outpost. It was a huge, square room of brushed silver steel. The walls were studded with consoles and terminals and workstations, there were several crates and foldout tables and chairs scattered across the area. Dead ahead of them, directly across from the opening, was a large, vault-like door with a big window of unbreakable glass set into the center. There was nothing living in the room, though Jack saw a lot of corpses around.

"I think that's what we're looking for," he muttered as he hurried across the room. Sure enough, as he stepped up to the glass, he looked in and saw, mounted on a table in the middle of a small room lit up with brilliant white lights, encased in a glass case, was…

Well, he didn't know _what_ the fuck it was, except that it kind of looked like a gun and it was big and silver and nasty-looking.

"Bingo," he said. He backed up a few paces and Miller joined him. "Now we just have to figure out how in the fuck to get it open..."

They both froze as a banging noise began to sound from somewhere to the right. They both spun around, shotguns raised, hunting for the source. There was nothing, except... _there,_ Jack thought, advancing slowly on a panel in the wall set between two big workstations. It looked different from everything else. When they drew closer, the sound got louder, and Jack thought he could hear shouting faintly.

"Someone's in there," he said, slinging the shotgun and hunting for a way to open the panel. "God, it might be McNeil or Lynch. Help me."

After a few moments of frantic searching, they finally located the release for the panel. He had Miller stand back and cover him, just in case, and then he hit it. The panel slid up into its unseen niche and McNeil all but fell out of the small closet-sized space beyond. He grunted and cried out as he crashed to the floor.

"McNeil," Jack said, and he snapped his gaze up.

The Corporal looked like crap. He was wearing a bloodied, burned, pockmarked set of green armor, the helmet missing, his eyes wide and stricken, blood on his face, some of his hair missing, scorched off.

"Ward," he croaked. "Finally." He looked passed Jack. "Miller, you made it."

"Yes, Corporal. I made it," she agreed.

Jack offered the man his hand and for a second, McNeil simply stared at it, like he didn't know what it was. Then he took it and let Jack haul him to his feet.

"What the hell happened?" Jack asked.

McNeil sighed and shook his head, stumbling forward a bit, then falling heavily into one of the chairs. "Got teleported ahead of you, in here, with Lynch," he replied. "This place was crawling with them. It was a goddamned miracle I made it out at all. We fought off a clutch of zombies with our bare hands, grabbed some guns, shot the place up. Ran here, there, and everywhere trying to survive. I..." he sighed again, rubbed his eyes. "It's a bit of a blur, honestly. Lynch didn't make it. Lost Soul got her." He looked up at them suddenly. "Tell me you aren't the only ones."

"No," Jack replied quietly. "Pavel and Taylor are still alive. They're here, in another part of the area. But...we're all that's left. Jackson and Bennet are dead."

"Shit!" McNeil snapped. "I managed to find some armor, ammo, guns...then I got chased in here by some Demons, got backed into that closet and the damned panel closed on me. I've got no idea how long I've been in there."

"Same here," Jack muttered. "McNeil, uh...that's the gun, over there," he said, pointing. "We have to find out how to get in there."

McNeil looked over, then staggered to his feet and walked over to the vault-like door. He stared in through the window. "Well, so it is. Son of a bitch." He took several steps back and looked up at the door, studying it intently. "Okay, let's figure this out. Uh...see if any of these computers work," he said, moving over to the nearest one.

Jack updated Jennifer and Pavel on the situation. So far, all they had to report from their end was that they'd been killing zombies, Imps, and a few Cacodemons. From there, he and Miller helped McNeil move through the devastated control room. Most of the workstations sported the black eyes of shattered screens, pockmarked with bullet holes, sprayed with blood. But some of them still functioned, and after several minutes of intense, fervent hunting, the ruined computers slowly gave up their secrets. There weren't many left for them to give.

"Okay, I think we've got it," Jack said after they'd compared notes. "We need three goddamned keycards and a password. Blue, red, yellow." He let out an exasperated growl. "Fucking hell, just what we need. Let's get to it."

McNeil nodded. All he had on him was an SMG. Jack had been hoping that the man would've found something heftier, a chaingun or plasma rifle, but he supposed he should be happy that the Marine was alive and intact. He updated Jennifer and Pavel one more time, then set off one more time back into the corridors.

"How you doing?" Jack asked as he took point, shotgun at ready.

"Tired," McNeil admitted. "Really fucking tired of this shit."

"Yeah, I'm there with you. Although we had the boost of a berserker pack to keep us going...then again, if this goes on long enough, it won't fucking matter."

"Yeah," McNeil grunted.

They continued moving through the corridors, in between walls paneled in pale gray metal studded with bolts, marred occasionally by rusty iron girders. He stopped to check every side alcove they passed, and thankfully most of them were empty. After tracing their route back to the original break in the passageway, he pressed on into unknown territory. He was glad to have Miller and McNeil at his back, covering him. This was hard enough as it was. He didn't think he could have done this if he was completely alone.

The walls changed as they pressed on. First becoming what they had been before, steel panels with little vent grilles on them, then shifting abruptly into bland, deep gray, smooth stonework. It ultimately terminated in a small, square room with seven other doorways fitted into the walls. Jack sighed heavily as he looked around at them. Four of them, (including the one they'd just now come in through), were smaller and set into slanted portions of the wall between the larger doors. Jack walked up to one of them.

"Let's knock these smaller ones out first," he said. "Even money says they don't really go anywhere."

"Let's see," McNeil replied.

Jack opened the door. His vision was filled with red. Something roared and a fireball smashed into his chestplate, sending him stumbling back. "Son of a fuck!" he screamed, snapping the shotgun up and blasting out three slug shells into the huge, open mouth of the Cacodemon that had been hiding behind the door.

It roared again in furious pain and deflated, spraying its demonic guts all over the narrow alcove it had been barely able to fit in.

"What the hell was it even doing in there!?" Jack groaned as he shakily fed three more shells into the shotgun, chest smarting.

"Waiting for us, or someone," Miller murmured.

"Well...I was right, at least," Jack growled.

They opened up the other two smaller doors, finding them empty. And, lo and behold, behind the fat, bloated corpse of the Cacodemon, Jack spied a blue keycard still being held by a pale hand. He retrieved it, pried out of the hand, and pocketed it. They managed to scavenge some magazines and shells from a small cache hidden at the back of one of the other alcoves, and Jack found himself fiercely curious as to who had put it here. It didn't seem very formal, so it was unlikely to be from those who had manned this UAC outpost.

Then again, everything was unlikely around here.

It could be a fucking ghost vampire dog from the future for all he knew.

They gathered at the first of the four larger doors and opened it up. Jack prepared himself for a fresh wave of horror, but there was nothing in the short, broad corridor beyond the door. Instead, he found himself staring at stone walls covered in more of those creepy green vines. Overhead, he saw neat rows of diamond yellow lights. Weird. He moved slowly, carefully, down the corridor, again taking point.

It was when they were about two thirds of the way down the corridor when the grinding noise began. Snapping his gaze up, Jack shouted in fear and surprise as he realized the ceiling was coming down on them. He sprinted forward, coming into a room that extended off to the left and right and ended abruptly ahead of him. Except no, it didn't. The wall dead ahead of them snapped up, and a pair of Demons, backed up by a half-dozen Lost Souls, sprang into view.

"Frag out!" McNeil screamed, and Jack reacted automatically, rushing off to the left even as he registered the trademark sound of a fragmentation grenade striking a hard surface. He barely had time to hit the far wall maybe ten feet away before there was a deafening explosion and the sound of a metal rain of fiery fragments pinging off of every surface, mixed in with the shrieks of a dozen dying monsters. He spun around, shotgun raised, waiting to see what else was coming his way. He saw that Miller had joined him in his small corridor. McNeil was down the other direction. They waited several seconds, then gathered in the center again.

"Nice," Jack said, staring at the ruined interior.

"Brutal," McNeil agreed. "My only one, for the record."

"Well, you did good," Jack replied. They spent a moment poking through the remains, finding nothing worthwhile, and had just begun debating what to do about the lowered ceiling, which was now completely blocking off their only exit, when it began to return to its original position. As soon as it was high enough they took the opportunity to get out while it was still a certainty. Once they were back into the main room, they closed that door and then gathered at the next one. McNeil and Miller stood off to his sides, weapons at ready.

Jack hit the button.

He expected something to attack him, a Demon, an Imp, _something_ , but he found himself looking into another octagonal room, the walls fitted with more of those sheets of gray metal. From what he could see, the openings along the walls just led into big, empty, closet-sized extensions. The light was good, no shadows, and nothing moved. He didn't trust it all. But there, dead ahead across the room, right up against the wall, was a pedestal.

Instead of a still-beating human heart resting atop it, like he'd seen before, there was a keycard. A red one. They moved slowly into the room, covering the sides, checking for anything. But they remained alone.

"Miller," McNeil whispered. "Grab the card, let's get out of here."

"On it," Miller replied, moving quickly up to the pedestal. Jack tensed, preparing himself for something to happen, some fresh nightmare to be visited on them. Miller reached the pedestal, reached out, and took the card.

The second her hand touch the card, a huge panel behind the pedestal snapped open, revealing a Baron of Hell. Before anyone could say or do anything, it made a fist and punched Miller's head clean off her body. A huge spray of blood escaped her neck as her body went stumbling, dying nerves working furiously, and then it collapsed.

Her head, still inside its helmet, went bouncing away.

" _MILLER!_ " McNeil roared as he opened fire.

Jack felt an inarticulate roar of white-hot fury escape his mouth with such power that the inside of his visor was sprayed with foamy spittle as he raised his shotgun and began firing off as fast as the gun would allow him to. Bloody wounds opened up on the Baron's broad, muscular chest and it roared in response as it tried to get off a ball of green energy at them. It managed to throw two that missed before they emptied their weapons into its chest and face and put the thing down. Jack felt red creeping into his vision.

He tore across the room, unable to contain himself, kicking the huge, eight-foot corpse, shrieking an incoherent strange of curses at it, going and going until he dropped to his knees and began punching what remained of its head.

Eventually, his anger burned itself out, and he found himself staring at drops of blood on the outside of his visor. Gasping to get his breath back, he struggled to his feet and looked down at his hands. His armored gauntlets were dented and covered in blood and shreds of flesh. He sighed, suddenly tired, and took a moment to wipe off his visor, using one of the several cleaning wipes that all suits mercifully came packed with. He took it off and cleaned the interior, too. While he did that, McNeil silently crossed the room to Miller's headless corpse and pried the keycard from her death grip. Jack replaced his helmet and joined him.

"Fuck," Jack muttered after a moment, then crouched and began recovering whatever supplies and ammo he could from the dead Marine.

"I dunno how much more of this I can take," McNeil said as he straightened up.

"We'll take all of it," Jack replied, his voice flat. "Because we don't have a choice."

McNeil grunted in response. They left the room and made for the final door. Somewhere in his deadening mind, Jack knew that this was the last obvious route. There were no other entrances on this side of the acid pond. So they'd either get lucky here or have to start hunting for hidden passageways. The next room was another vine-covered affair housing a small collection of Imps and zombies. They didn't stand a chance.

Jack and McNeil blasted them away in a few seconds. They crossed the room after checking it out, moving to the only other door. Jack opened it up...and nearly shot Jennifer in the face. He lowered his shotgun at the last second.

"Oh thank fuck," Jennifer said. "We've been trying to find a way over and...what's wrong?" she asked.

"Miller's KIA," Jack replied quietly.

"Fucking god _damnit!_ " she snapped.

"We've found two of the keycards. Any luck on your end?" he continued. That same lethargy came down on him, not just of physical fatigue but mental as well.

Jennifer took a deep breath, held it, blew it out slowly. No doubt reassessing her focus. Mission came first, always. "We found a yellow keycard, a PDA, and an exit. Exit needs yellow and blue keycards."

"Well, that's all the puzzle pieces then. We got the other two keycards and between the two of us, we can get into that special armory," Jack replied.

He led them back through the twisting maze of corridors, all of them walking silently, keeping focused, until they arrived back at the main room. Jack thought that he'd feel some kind of sense of accomplishment or even a grim kind of joy when they got the door open. But as they swiped the cards and fed the code into the terminal and the door slid up into the ceiling, he didn't feel much of anything. Mainly, he just felt tired.

They walked carefully inside, checking the corners for any hidden threats, but they were alone. And, even better, there were two more doors, one on either side, that, when opened, revealed smaller but jam-packed armories.

"Holy fuck," Pavel muttered. "That's a shitload of guns."

"And that's a big gun," Jack said as he opened up the huge glass case containing the top-secret weapon they'd been seeking. It was indeed very large. It was bulky, with lots of protrusions, made of some strange amalgamation of black and steel silver metal and plastic and glass and other unidentifiable components. It had a big goddamned bore, shaped like an upside-down pyramid, sticking out of the front. There was a big, crooked pieces jutting up from the back end. Jack slowly opened the case and reached in.

"What in the hell _is_ this?" he muttered as he picked it up.

The gun was surprisingly light. He thought it'd be a bitch to pick up, but the materials must be some of those lighter-than-plastic stronger-than-steel super-science kinds he'd heard about whenever he glanced at the news. Well, at least it _looked_ like a gun. And it handled like one, too. He held it up, twisting it over, and found something stenciled on the side in very unprofessional scrawl. It rea 9000. Only...no.

He got closer, saw that there were more letters in between the big ones, and they made words. "What's it say?" Jennifer asked.

"Big Fucking Gun," he replied, then laughed, because he couldn't help it. "Is that what they called it? The Big Fucking Gun Nine Thousand? Well, I gotta admit, it's a million miles better than all the weird crap the scientists come up with."

"Does it take ammo?" Pavel asked.

Jack checked it over. "Not...that I can see," he murmured. "Fuck, this is going to be a do-or-die thing, isn't it? Well, let's see if we can find some specs or instructions, and stock the hell up on guns and ammo," he replied.

It at least had a glowing green bar on the top labeled **ENERGY LEVEL**. Even better, it had a handy shoulder strap.

They spent the next fifteen minutes going over the armories and the immediate area. Although they couldn't find any form of guide to the BFG, they managed to find a big store of supplies. Jack shoved as many magazines and shells into his pockets as he could find, and even managed to locate another plasma rifle with four full cells of energy for ammo. Jennifer grabbed a chaingun and several big yellow boxes of ammo, while McNeil grabbed the final of the heavy weapons lying around: a rocket launcher with a good dozen rockets. Pavel, though he didn't have a larger weapon, did stock up for his shotgun, grabbed an SMG and a pair of pistols, and several grenades to top it all off. Fully armed, the squad left the armory.

"And now we head into the wild red yonder," Jennifer said as they got to the exit teleporter and unlocked it. "Because we've got no fucking clue what lies beyond."

"It could be the big bad fucker we're looking for," McNeil replied.

"Doubt we'll be so lucky," Jack said. "But I'll go first. Remember the procedure, thirty-second intervals, one at a time. Be ready for anything."

He tried to prepare himself for anything as he stepped onto the pad.


	45. EPISODE 01: Penultimate

He appeared in a short, narrow alcove, the walls, floor, and ceiling made of patterned slate-gray octagons. Shotgun locked in a death grip, Jack moved forward, marching off the pad of rusted red metal, out of the alcove and into the room beyond. Secure the area, always the first order of business. He conned the room with a quick swivel of his head. Walls of white and black stone, not looking created by more natural, (inasmuch as anything could be natural in this godforsaken hellscape), comprised the small area. There were two pillars tattooed with skulls that had glowing red eyes, and a pair of doors.

Almost immediately as he crossed the threshold into that area, a pair of Demons stormed out from behind the pillars, coming for him with murder on their minds. He could see it, plain as sunshine, in their glowing, golden eyes. He snapped the shotgun towards the left one and pounded out a shell, putting it right down the monster's gullet and killing it. The other stomped closer, faster, and he swiveled and fired again. The shell took it in the chest, opening up a hole and staggering it briefly, but not deterring it.

He fired again as the beast came within arm's length of him, reaching for him, intent on consuming his body. This shot hit it dead in its eye, blowing the golden orb into a bloody socket of ruined flesh. As it sank the ground, Jack kept a vigil, seeing if anything else would come running at the sound. But the two exits, one just an opening in the wall, the other a more artificial looking rectangle cut into the rock leading to a manufactured hallway, remained vacant.

In the distance, he could hear growls, moans, and shouts.

Alone for now, but that wouldn't last.

The others appeared in thirty second intervals and joined him in the main room. "What now?" McNeil asked. "Split up?"

"No, not any longer," Jack replied. "We need to stay together." He looked at the two entrances and finally decided on the left one for a reason he couldn't be sure of. It might have been that the manufactured appearance of what little corridor he could see beyond it appealed to him. It offered some small comfort, no matter how false, in this hellish maelstrom of bloody chaos. He led the way, shotgun in hand, the others falling in step behind him, intent on pushing on, pushing through. Digging to the end of this horror.

However far that might be.

It occurred to Jack, as he stepped into the area beyond, that this might go on for ages. Who knew how big Hell was? How would they realistically find their way to this beast? How would they find their way back? He shook off the black terror those thoughts brought to the best of his ability, studying the corridor he'd come it. It extended immediately away to the left, made of a tan kind of metal with artificial lights built into the ceiling.

Fielding said that the UAC hadn't really been this far out, or at least had given the impression that they hadn't spent enough time in this region to get any serious work done. And these lights weren't just strung up or slapped on, they were built _into_ the ceiling. What did that mean? Had the demons done it? If so, how? Why?

His questions only grew as they reached the end of the corridor and came to a series of rooms that seemed to be a haphazard collection of stone walls studded with big sections of silver steel embedded with screens, switchboards, and workstations that had clearly come from a UAC facility. It didn't look natural though. How had it gotten here? Imps roamed these rooms, hissing and shrieking as they noticed the human interlopers, and the two groups began to exchange fire. He wondered, as he emptied his shotgun and hastily reloaded, if maybe some kind of teleportation event might have occurred. What if portions of either Phobos or Deimos Base had been snatched out of reality and slammed in here? Or even swapped.

He remembered seeing hellish architecture on Deimos.

And if that was the case, why? Was it an accident? Some natural side effect of the process? Or was it intentional? What was their goal, beyond death and destruction? Did they even have one? He finished off the last Imp and they all took a few moments to more thorough check out the area. The sense of dislocation, of unreality, only heightened as they explored the side rooms. The walls were made of stone, but they were covered in some strange blue material that resembled circuitry, blown up to ridiculous proportions.

They finished clearing out the area, collecting up whatever ammo they could find, and then popped open the next door and shifted slowly into the next section. Jack moved cautiously down a narrow descending stairway. It led into a huge, open, warehouse-sized room. And, like a warehouse, it was filled with UAC-stamped crates of varying sizes. Somewhere in the proliferation of metal, he could hear the snorting and grunting of more Demons. The immediate area was fairly open, but it was bordered by the stacks of crates.

"Okay, we should-"

Jack didn't even begin to get a chance to formulate a plan, because it was at that second that a general roar went up and a living wave of burned-pink flesh began emerging from around the crates. Jack immediately opened fire, as did the others. They stood in a staggered line, facing the tide of death that was stomping towards them. The world became awash in a sea of flying blood, muzzle flares, and gunsmoke. Jack worked through the shells in his shotgun as fast as he could. He hardly had to aim, there were so many of the things.

One went down to a headshot, another took a round in the face, another staggered and collapsed, neck pumping blood.

He could see others being taken down by the hail of gunfire. But there were more coming in, and now Imps, too. As he heard the distinct sound of a chaingun being activated, Jack thought, for a moment, that they had this.

Then, rising silently from behind more crates across the huge room, he saw a small flotilla of Cacodemons, backed up by a fleet of Lost Souls, coming their way.

"Aw, fuck it!" he snapped, letting the shotgun hang and pulling out his plasma rifle. "McNeil! Rocket launcher! Floaters!" he screamed.

McNeil snapped off a response and as Jack, Jennifer, and Pavel opened fire on the horde of Demons and Imps pressing in on them, mowing them down, a rocket sailed through the air, smashing into one of the Cacodemons and blowing it to pieces. The resulting explosion took out a few of the Lost Souls. He fired again, then again, hitting the Cacodemons and Lost Souls in their largest clusters. Death rained down from above.

The plasma rifle felt like raw power in his hands as he squeezed the trigger and moved the strange, square-shaped barrel back and forth with a ridiculous ease. Brilliant, blue-white balls of plasma seared through the air, burning into the tough flesh of the Demons and Imps, singeing and blackening skin everywhere they touched. Monsters died roaring beneath the onslaught. And then, suddenly, there were no more balls of energy.

The gun had gone dry.

As Jack reloaded the strange energy cell that served as ammo, he was at least glad to see that the others had finished off the mob of hell-spawn. "Holy shit, what the hell was _that_ all about?" he muttered, surveying the carnage.

No one seemed to have anything to say to that, so instead the quartet spread out and searched the area. Despite resembling a warehouse, there didn't seem to be a whole lot actually in the room. Most of the crates were empty. The few doors they came across led only to smaller side rooms that were just as useless. Eventually, they gathered at the only way out: another corridor that terminated a few dozen feet away in another wood-and-metal door.

The squad trudged on, pushing themselves silently deeper into this nightmare dimension. And it didn't get a whole lot better from there. They opened the door and moved down a broad, low corridor of tan stone. It opened up into a large courtyard that was divided into sections by small creeks of bubbling green toxins or acid. There were square pillars of stone placed seemingly at random across the area, and attached to them…

"God," Jennifer whispered.

People. People had been chained to the pillars, held up by their wrists with rusty old chains. Some had had their legs ripped off by what appeared to be brute force, and their intestines, fat and ropy, hung out the bottom, snaking away from their torsos. Jack felt his stomach twitch, but that was the extent of his reaction, and that worried him.

Good lord, how desensitized would he be by the end of this?

As they moved forward into the area, a huge panel across the way snapped open and a Baron of Hell stepped out. As it was roaring, before Jack could react, McNeil snapped "Oh, shut the fuck up!" and fired off a rocket.

It went directly into the Baron's open mouth and blew off its head, neck, and some of its upper chest. The decapitated corpse took a few lurching, swaying steps, as if drunk, and then toppled over and crashed into one of the acid creeks with a splash.

"Holy fucking shit, that was awesome," Jack said, unable to keep from laughing. Something about the whole even struck him as impossible, yet he'd just witnessed it.

"I fucking hate those things," McNeil replied.

"That was an amazing shot," Jennifer said.

"It was honestly luck," the Sergeant admitted as he fed another rocket into the launcher.

"We could really use more of that," Pavel said quietly.

Jack nodded in agreement, then led the search. They hunted quickly but fervently through the area, taking down a handful of Imps and zombies in the process. In the end, after checking out a few alcoves and a handful of rooms, all they got for their troubles was a blue skull-key. He supposed it was probably worth it, but he honestly would have preferred a bit more. A way out would be nice, but no, they hadn't met their minimum necessary suffering quotient yet. So they retraced their steps, coming back to the room they'd originally appeared in, and took the other door. This one led around into a room of pale stone and blue metal.

There was a door with blue trim.

"Should we open it?" Pavel asked.

Jack shook his head after a moment, instead looking at another opening across the way. His shoulder was throbbing again from where that Baron had hit him so long ago. How long had that even been? He tried to ignore the pain. "No, let's leave it for now," he said, moving forward, "I want to see what's back here."

They followed him, moving down another stone tunnel, and coming to yet another surreal piece of architecture. There was a turn in the corridor, and they came to a flickering corridor with more of those built-in light fixtures overhead. They pulsed almost in sync, causing light to go down the length of the corridor away from them, one turning on after the other. As they reached its end, they found a room made of bright, shiny silver metal, the walls all stamped with the UAC logo again. And at its head was another Baron of Hell.

"How many of these goddamned things are there?!" Jack growled, raising his plasma rifle and opening fire, wanting to kill it as quickly as possible. Jennifer joined in with her chaingun. The two barrages of fire, plasma balls and bullets, converged on the awful beast and sprayed its steaming scarlet blood all over the chromium walls. The thing died with a roar.

"We're getting better at this," Jack murmured.

"Don't get cocky," Pavel warned.

"Yeah, I guess so."

As it turned out, the Baron was guarding something else: a red skull-key. They claimed it, pocketed it, and moved on, as this place was a dead end. Jack was beyond questioning almost anything anymore. He didn't want to think about the mysteries and enigmas and insanity of this realm. Didn't want to ponder on any of it. He was beginning to worry that he was reaching the end of his rope. And the others didn't seem to be doing that good either. But they had to keep going. They _had_ to. What other choice was there?

They went back to the blue door and opened it up.

A corridor of gleaming silver tech awaited his inspection. He edged cautiously forward, moving down the passageway and coming into a room that ran lengthwise, stretching away to the left and right, made of more silver tech. Everything had a blue trim to it. Jack shook his head, trying not to think about it, finding himself switching back and forth between asking why, _why_ was this here, and just not giving a fuck.

It helped when a clutch of Imps wandered into the room.

As he opened fire on them, everything seemed to become a haze of frenzied activity. They ripped and tore their way through more steel silver, blue-chromed rooms, past blinking displays and rows of glowing blue circles embedded in the floors. They put down a dozen Imps, a dozen zombies, an awful proliferation of Lost Souls and Demons and a few Cacodemons thrown in for good measure. They murdered their way up and down the area, spraying the walls with blood and spilling guts and gore across the shiny floors.

Jack blasted through his shotgun ammo, shoving more in wherever he found some, and then putting an SMG he found clutched in the hands of a zombie to work. He rattled through every last round he had and ended up breaking it, using it to bash in the skull of an Imp that got too close for comfort. At the end of it, after the murdering and killing and screaming and gunfire, the quartet of blood-drenched, hell-shocked survivors found themselves standing before another teleport. Except this one was strangely different.

It wasn't a gateway, nor was it a simple red pad. It was somewhere in between. A pad of black metal with intricately carved runic symbols across it was situated between clusters of black crystals that seemed to grow at random from the walls, floor, and ceiling. It glowed and hummed with a dark, pulsing energy.

Behind it, through the unnatural archway created by the sharp black crystals, they saw a horrifying carving on the wall. It was of a face, an alien face with huge eyes and a large, bulbous head stared at them with malice and judgment and a cold alien fury. Jack shuddered and looked away from it. "I think...this is it," he said. "This is the end."

"Christ," Pavel muttered. "I almost don't want to do it."

"I really don't want to do it," McNeil muttered. "All this hell we've faced...what the fuck is at the end of this madness?"

"Nothing good," Jennifer murmured.

Jack looked over at her, and suddenly felt a nearly unbreakable compulsion come over him. He blinked, licked his lips, glanced at the others. "Could you, uh...give us a minute? Wait here for us?" he asked.

"Yeah sure, what's going on?" McNeil asked.

"I need to talk to Jennifer before we go, alone," he replied.

She was looking at him now, confused. McNeil seemed to get it, though. "Oh, okay." He nodded. "Don't take too long."

"I won't." He reached out his hand and she took it, allowing him to lead her back out of the corridor and into the previous room. He looked around it, at the corpses, the strange tech that was being meshed unnaturally with the hellish architecture. He really wished he had a better environment to talk in, but that just wasn't going to happen.

"What's wrong?" Jennifer asked.

"Well, I'm scared of dying," he replied, then laughed. "And so, because of that, because I think this is going to be the end, I really think I should tell you something: I love you."

She blinked, looking momentarily bewildered, and he felt a little bad, throwing her a curveball like this, in the middle of all this crap, but time had run out. "I'm sorry," he continued, "if this is too much, or uh...unwanted. I just thought you should know. I don't know if either of us is going to make it and there's so much fucking ugly shit in this world and I feel like...like..." he sighed, struggling. "Without sound stupid as hell and like some lame ass poet, I feel like what I feel for you is...pure. It's unequivocally _good._ Loving you is, has been, honestly, the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. It feels right. So, I just thought, um, it should be said."

"I love you too, Jack," she replied.

He felt a tremendous relief at hearing that, at seeing the kind, happy, accepting expression on her haggard face.

"Well...that's really great to hear," he said.

She laughed. "It's great to say." She sighed suddenly. "Now, if only we can survive this shit, we can talk about this more and celebrate it later."

"All the more reason to get out of this alive," he replied.

Knowing they couldn't put it off any longer, the pair rejoined Pavel and McNeil. Jack felt a pang of empathy for them, and guilt. They didn't have anyone. Or if they did, not here. Well...they were probably all going to die anyway.

At this point, in the darker corners of his heart, his only real hope was that he managed to take out the thing behind this invasion, the mastermind.

"Ready?" McNeil asked.

"Ready," Jack replied, taking his customary place as first through the portal.

He stepped on, and disappeared in a flash of black light.


	46. EPISODE 01: Dis

This teleport felt different.

The previous ones, with the exception of the gateways themselves, were pretty much instantaneous, just a weird kind of buzzing feeling with a bright green flash. This one, on the other hand, hurled him into a pit of screaming darkness. Frozen black fire spilled through him, over and under and inside, and he tried to scream, but had no mouth to scream with. And then there was a jump, like an earthquake rolled all up into half a second, and he was staggering on a flat stone ground, utterly disoriented.

Jack fell over, grunted in pain as he dropped the shotgun, but that was a relief at least. The notion that he was still armed, that he had come through the other side with his armor, his guns, (he could feel their familiar, comforting weight on his body), helped ground him back to reality. He used it, groping around as his vision came back to him, and finally gripped the black, pitted barrel of the shotgun. It scraped across the stone as he pulled it to him. Jack fought the urge to vomit. When it passed, he lurched to his feet.

Jennifer appeared in a black flash. She cried out and he caught her. She tried to jerk briefly out of his grasp, but relaxed as he talked to her, bringing her back. As he did, he looked around. They'd arrived in a small stone chamber lit by torches made of...no, they weren't torches. They were human arms. The fingers were acting as wicks, burning. There was just one way out of the chamber, a stone tunnel dead ahead.

It was clear, for now, but he could see an awful red light spilling in from its far end. As if in direct contrast to the bad shit he was finding around him, the peripheral of the room was packed with tables and crates, and they had ammo in them. And guns.

"Holy fuck," Jennifer said as she noticed it too.

"Yep," Jack replied. "I wonder what all this is doing here..."

"This looks like someone's preparing to fight a war." She paused. "I don't get it. They already slaughtered almost everyone on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos, and-" McNeil appeared in another flask of black light and yelled hoarsely.

They helped get him back to his feet and stable again, and then did the same thing for Pavel once he appeared.

"Man, that sucked," McNeil muttered.

"Yeah. Jennifer, you were saying something," Jack said. "It sounded important."

She looked pale and uncomfortable. "They've already wiped almost everyone out back where we came from. And pretty much all of them have the ability to produce deadly attacks on their own. Why would they need all this, except to arm the zom-" She froze. "Oh God, the zombies. That's...oh crap," she muttered.

"What?" Pavel asked. "What is it?"

"Did you notice anything weird about our enemies? Did you notice how the Imps are absolutely nothing like the Demons, which are totally different from the Cacodemons? The Hell Knights? The Lost Souls? It's like they don't come from the same regions, the same planets. It's more like they're...attacking and conquering wherever they find, and inducting them into their ranks. They take them over, and-"

"And we're next," Jack muttered.

"They're preparing to attack Earth..." Pavel whispered.

"How could they get there?" Jack asked, frowning, thinking furiously. "I mean, it's obvious that the only way they're going to get in is through portals. But the UAC only had portals here, unless-"

"Unless they experimented other places," Jennifer said.

"They aren't so stupid that they'd built a gateway to Hell on Earth," Jack said. They stared at him silently. He sighed. "Okay, well...yeah, they probably are. _Fuck!_ So how the hell are we going to deal with _that_ then!?"

"Kill the mastermind," McNeil replied firmly. "I can feel it. That thing is _here._ And we have the means to take it out. We'll kill it, and then...figure out what happens next."

"Wing it," Jack muttered.

"Best survival skill you can have: the ability to adapt," Jennifer said.

"I suppose that's true." Jack looked around the room. "Okay, load up. We're going to kill the fucking shit out of this thing. Whatever it is."

The four of them descended on the tables and crates of guns and ammo. Most of it was bloody, and he knew at once that it was because all of this stuff had been handled by zombies. Of course. He filled his pockets with shells and magazines, even found a few grenades, and four more of the black power cells for his plasma rifle. But as they stocked up, Jack slowly became aware of a sound. Almost as soon as he picked up on it, he found it impossible to believe that he'd missed it until now. But then, it was so...powerful.

It was like standing in the middle of a baseball stadium with fifty thousand screaming fans while simultaneously standing atop a battleship with its engines thrumming beneath you. He didn't so much hear it as feel it.

"What _is_ that?" Pavel whispered.

"Demons. Devils," Jack heard himself whisper. "There has to scores of them out there."

"We're gonna need a plan," Jennifer said.

"Recon first," McNeil replied. "Then we plan."

Jack nodded tightly and set out, shotgun in hand, finger inside the trigger guard. They were so close now. The four of them, bloodied and battered and bruised, warriors of Hell, shell-shocked and stricken, stalked down the last hallway. It was their only recourse, the only place left to go. The end of the stone tunnel grew closer, larger. The bloody red light grew brighter. Jack felt a dull throb building in his brain.

He reached the end of the tunnel first.

For several seconds, he was utterly paralyzed. He was frozen, rooted, affixed to his position and for a second there, just a second, he felt control leave his mind. He _almost_ began screaming. But years of hard training, of experience born of conflict and blood and death, clamped down like a vault door on his terror and insecurities and weaknesses. It locked them away, for the time being, and he was given control of his mind, and thus his body, back.

He was looking at a sea of enemies.

There had to be hundreds of them, perhaps over a thousand. All of them were crowded in one huge open field. In the distance, he could see stone walls, and off to the left and right, several hundred meters away, he saw large openings that led down broad but relatively short areas. All of it had an open ceiling, and the sky overhead roiled with blood-red madness. He saw everything they had come up against so far. He even saw a pair of Cyberdemons.

"How in God's name are we going to deal with this?" McNeil whispered. Jack looked over, the man had gone white, his eyes wide, consumed with total terror.

Jack swallowed, forced himself to focus, to think, to plan.

There _had_ to be a way out of this. And there was something scrabbling around in his brain, something trying to get out, to be remembered. Something crucially important. The linchpin to this whole thing.

A way out.

Nobody spoke for several minutes, crouched there on a mantle about fifteen feet above the ground, hidden among the shadows. There were _so_ many of them...Jack thought and thought, pushing, hunting through all his knowledge on these horrors. They'd fought overwhelming numbers before, like that time when they'd teleported directly into a room with six of those fucking Barons, and then he'd run and opened the door and found the Cacodemons and they-

He gasped. "I know how to do it," he said suddenly, resolution hardening his voice.

"How?" all three of them asked at once.

"They fight each other," he said. "You give them an excuse, and they fight each other. So we have to give them an excuse."

"How do we do that without getting slaughtered?" McNeil asked.

"It'll be risky, to be sure, but everything we do is." Jack held up one of the fragmentation grenades he'd found and grinned.

The other three looked back at him, then slowly nodded, reflecting his grim, death's-head grin. "How do we do this best?" Pavel asked.

"How many grenades do we have between us?" he asked. They counted. There were eight. "Okay, two for each of us. This is what we do: split up. Move along the walls. We're going to sync up. After say...five minutes, we throw the grenades as far away from us as we can, where they'll do the most damage, and...hope this fucking works."

"Five minutes isn't a lot of time," McNeil said.

"I know but every extra second we dick around is a bigger risk of being discovered."

McNeil pressed his lips together, frowning, and nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay, McNeil, Pavel, break left. One of you stop at the corner there, right where the walls turns left and begins to head into that open area, the other try to get around that area, to the other side of it. It's not that big. The more spread out we can do this, the better. Questions?" There were none. "Then let's do this."

"Good luck," McNeil said.

"To us all," Jack agreed.

They split up.

McNeil and Pavel jogged away to the left, moving along the five foot wide stone mantle that ran around the entire length of this strange pit. He and Jennifer broke right. They didn't speak as they ran on. They'd said all that needed to be said beforehand, so they could concentrate wholly on the task at hand. Jack knew there were a hell of a lot of what-ifs in this scenario. What if they didn't fight each other? What if they spotted them beforehand? What if this wasn't enough to kill all of them? To kill...whatever it was that was controlling this?

He tried scanning the crowd several times, hunting for some unfamiliar shape, something huge, because in his mind, whatever this thing was, it was gonna be big. But he couldn't see anything among the thronging masses of demonic horrors. It was hard to tell, though. The area extended beyond his ability to easily see. And he needed to focus on not falling. Just a mere fifteen feet below him was a riot of Imps, zombies, and Demons. Cacodemons and Lost Souls floated thither and yon overhead, and all it would take was one instant of bad timing…

They reached the corner and Jennifer stopped, crouching and pressing herself up against the wall. Jack grabbed her shoulder, squeezed it once, hard, and kept on running. He had three and a half minutes left. His heart was hammering as he ran along the mantle, desperate to maintain the timeline. There were so many things that could go wrong. This was easily the most dangerous thing he'd ever done in his entire life.

If there was a God, he honestly hoped that He'd help this time around.

Jack hit the first corner and took the turn, making his way across the back wall of the open area he needed to get around. A lot of thoughts raced through his mind. How many people had he killed? How many families had he destroyed? How many men and women had he failed to save? God, how many people had he killed on accident? There were a lot of crazy-ass situations and it wasn't always easy to predict where your shots were gonna go, especially when the walls were made of crap materials and bullets punched through them like a knife through butter.

He'd done some bad things in his life.

But Jack liked to think that, at his core, he was still a good person. The reason he did what he did was that he was trying to strive for a greater good. But how often was that just bullshit? How many times had he been fighting some jacked-up four-star General's war, or some political moron who wouldn't know the business end of a rifle if his fucking life depended on it? How many times had he fought over oil, energy, clean water?

God, how many times had he helped, somehow, someway, aid and abet some religious war? Or some crazy ideological war?

That didn't even count the fucking corporations like the UAC who had deals up the ass with the military all over the world. How many times had he fought to protect some lying fuck, some greedy corporate bag of shit's interests because the locals were rightly pissed off? In a way, a savagely horrible way, he almost liked the demons. Because they were unequivocally, unquestioningly evil. They were as evil as evil got.

There was no ambiguity here.

They were going to kill or enslave everyone. There was no negotiating with them, no begging, no threatening. There would be no mercy. And thus, none must be given in return. There was a clear, clean factor to fighting these things. You felt _good_ whenever you killed one, because you knew that you were doing something unquestioningly good.

Despite all this, despite the notion that having to fight these things would probably unify the human race, he would do anything to stop them from spreading. Because the loss of life if these things got out on Earth would be staggering, unthinkable. And there was no guarantee that they could stop them if they invaded.

He looked out over the vast, shifting field of screaming, roaring, growling horrors and in them he saw the extinction of the human race, the apocalypse. They had to be stopped. Jack hit the next corner and jogged on, going and going and going, pushing through the exhaustion, the hunger, the pain. Oh, the pain.

His whole body hurt.

By the time the counter was approaching zero, he'd made it a pretty good distance. He could just barely make out the shadowy figures of his comrades, the last bastions against the hordes of hell. Jack grabbed and primed the first grenade, then hurled it as hard and as far as he could off to his right. He was glad to see that it went quite a ways out there. He did the same thing dead ahead of him. As soon as the grenade left his hand, Jack went back against the wall and crouched, trying to disappear, to be invisible.

The grenades began to go off.

He started to hear roaring, then screaming and shrieking and groaning and everything else in between.

And then it happened.

An apocalyptic level battle began to open up in the pit below him. Jack simply stared. Even from his hidden position, he had a good view of the battlefield. Chaos screamed. Blood flew. He found his eyes drawn to the Cyberdemons, who were interested in defending themselves from the horde of monsters around them that recognized they were the biggest threat and focused on taking them down. They leveled their rocket arms and let fly.

Jack didn't know how long he crouched there, staring.

The Imps and Barons threw their balls of fire and green energy. The Demons chowed down. The Cacodemons and Lost Souls rained down death from above. He even saw a few of those weird spider-queen things and clusters of their skull-spider minions tearing it up. The zombies...pretty much just got straight up slaughtered.

Eventually, the sheer number of monsters began to dwindle. The horde was thinning out. And then...it happened.

Something noticed the humans hidden among them.

There was so much happening that Jack didn't know who was discovered first or how, but it didn't matter, because suddenly he was under attack and two dozen balls of fire and energy were converging on his position. Jack immediately switched to the plasma rifle and opened fire at the quartet of Cacodemons that were coming for him, some of the few left in the air. Across the pit, three more blooms of gunfire opened up.

He popped them pretty quick, sending their splattered remains all over the demonic things below in a gory rain, and also dispatched the small flotilla of Lost Souls that happened to be nearby, but as he slapped a fresh energy cell in, he looked down and honestly wondered if he was going to be able to do this. The next phase of the battle had begun...and he _still_ hadn't seen anything resembling a demonic General.

But there was no time for that now.

Jack screamed as he rained down blue-white plasma fire on his enemies. Imps and Demons withered and died under the fire. Zombies staggered and collapsed. Two Barons of Hell went down. Then three. Then four. And then he reached for another energy cell and there was nothing left. Growling in frustration, he dropped the rifle, abandoning it because this was the end, and pulling out the Raptor SMG he'd snagged from the makeshift armory and cut loose. A dozen more enemies fell, two dozen, three.

He burned through eight magazines of ammo and tossed the gun away in terror. They were _still_ coming. No time to see how the others were doing, if they were even still alive. Too much happening, too much. Jack pulled out his shotgun and set to work, pumping shell after shell into them, taking headshots as often as he could. They were finally beginning to thin out at least. No more Barons of Hell in sight, no more floaters, either. He couldn't see any of those spider-queens and there was just one Cyberdemon left, and it was far off.

Just zombies and Imps and Demons, and he ignored the Demons, because they were of no threat to him up here and were getting so pissed off and frustrated that they were tearing into their friends more often than not. Jack fired off shotgun shells and fed more in and fired even more until his arms were beginning to go numb.

And then there were no more shells.

Now all he had was his fucking pistol and the BFG. It had been tempting to use it, very tempting during the first wave, but he was very glad he hadn't given in to temptation. Especially considering there was one Cyberdemon left and he _still_ couldn't see whatever it was they were looking for. So he hammered away with his pistol, and ended up getting down the very last magazine before finally he was alone.

The last zombie fell and the Demons had all either killed each other or been killed off by the survivors before Jack killed them. He looked around, trembling violently, gasping for breath, soaked in sweat, and felt a tremendous relief as he spied three figures in combat armor. They were still alive. Still standing. Still in the game-

As he was looking at Pavel, confirming the man's continued existence, he watched him disappeared in a tremendous plume of angry fire.

"Pavel!" he heard himself scream and jerked his head to the right, where the missile had come from. The last Cyberdemon. It was battered, damaged, bloodied. But still standing. Without thinking, Jack shoved the pistol into its holster and snatched up the BFG. Leveling it at the big thing, he called out a warning and squeezed the trigger.

The gun began to hum and vibrate. Oh God, what if it was a dud? What if there were other things to consider in its operation? What if-

A painfully bright ball of green energy burst forth from the front of the gun and sailed through the air, crackling violently as tendrils energy slithered away from it. The Cyberdemon turned to face him, perhaps registering the most immediate threat, and raised its rocket arm. It didn't get a chance to fire. The ball hit it and an overwhelmingly brilliant light burst. Jack cried out, staggering away, faceplate polarizing in an attempt to compensate. When his vision came back, his eyes widened in pure shock. All that was left of the Cyberdemon was a pair of smoking, smoldering legs. And bits and pieces of it were everywhere.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

" _We need to move on,"_ McNeil said over the radio, snapping him back to reality.

"I still don't see it," he said, slowly surveying the huge pit. Among the sea of hundreds of corpses and an ocean of blood, the only thing of note he could see was a large, square building in the middle of the area.

He could still hear something happening on the far side of the pit, though. It sounded like someone was firing a heavy duty gattling gun. Someone was mopping up over there...but who? What? He didn't think any of them had a damned minigun.

"Come on, let's go," Jack said. "Jennifer, need you here."

" _Coming,"_ she said.

" _You hear that?"_ McNeil asked. _"You think it's-"_

"The big bad guy? Yeah, I think it just might be."

" _Make sure you use that big fucking gun on it."_

"Oh believe me," Jack growled, looking down at the weapon, "I will."

He saw that the bar of green light on the side had diminished. It was gone by a quarter. Okay then...so he had three shots left. Well, hopefully he wouldn't need them. This thing was goddamned powerful as hell. As soon as Jennifer caught up with him, they set off. Far in the distance, he could see McNeil, alone, trekking across the mantle. They were down to three. Jack just wanted this nightmare to be over, and he felt more confident now that he'd seen the BFG in action. Although he wasn't totally sold on the idea of success.

Only an idiot was one hundred percent confident in themselves.

They kept going and before they could make it around the building, the gunfire cut off. Whatever it was, it had killed off everything else. What _was_ it? What could it be? As they drew even closer, he heard some kind of heavy machine hydraulics and the smashing of something metal hitting stone. Something _very_ weighty.

What the fuck could it be?!

Jack had his answer hardly thirty seconds later. He skidded to a halt as he finally caught sight of what it was they were looking for.

It was horror incarnate.

It was _big_. A fucking _behemoth_.

It had to be size of a small house. It was a...a spider thing. But nothing like the spider-queen he'd fought earlier. It was more like...God, it was like a giant gray brain built into a metal chassis, basically just a big platform with four huge metal legs coming out of it. There was a gattling gun, a big, fuck-off, six-barreled nightmare of shining chrome, sticking from the front of the platform. There were big silver wires coming up and around from the platform and sticking into the huge pulsating brain. Worst of all, though, was the face.

There was a sneering, screaming face etched into the brain. A thing with a huge mouth stuffed full of razor teeth and enormous, glowing crimson eyes. They stared at him with hideous hatred and alien menace.

A rocket shrieked from McNeil's position and hit the side of the brain. The beast let out a roar torn straight from the lowest depths of Hell. And why not? Truly, they must be there. With an awful speed, it swung on him and the minigun opened up. Jack screamed as he saw McNeil disappeared in a cloud of blood.

He hefted the BFG and fired off a shot. Another glowing green ball of energy burst into existence, cut through the air...and _missed_.

Jack screamed again in rage and terror as he saw the ball sear past this thing, this...Spider Mastermind, and singe its chassis and brain. It roared again and swung on him, the barrel still spinning, still firing even, chewing up bodies and stone and metal alike as it brought that impossible barrage of bullets, like a force of nature, to bear down on him and Jennifer.

He adjusted his aim and fired again.

The bullets reached them at the same time the ball of green energy hit the Mastermind. Jack cried out as he felt two of them hit home, one grazed across his left shoulder, the other cut through his right thigh, slicing through the armor.

Jennifer screamed.

He twisted around to look for her, to reach for her, right about the exact time she staggered forward and fell off the edge.

" _Jennifer!_ "

Jack began to go after her but then he heard the gunfire start up again and a furious, unending roar of impossible hatred. Twisting around, eyes bulging, teeth gritted, Jack raised the BFG once more and sighted the big brainy bastard. He'd blown off two of its legs and blackened a big portion of its brain...but it was still alive.

Not for long.

This time, his aim was dead on, because it wasn't going anywhere.

He fired. The ball of energy blasted through the air and cut into the beast, culminating in another painfully brilliant blast. When it was over, Jack took the bare minimum of time necessary to confirm that it was dead. And it was. Nothing but a heap of singed flesh and molten slag. He couldn't even discern its basic shape from the remains. As he moved to the edge, terror ripping at his heart and filling his veins with ice, the BFG began to whine and tremble. He looked down at it, frowning, then flung it away as it got worse.

It got perhaps five feet away before detonating.

Jack screamed as the force of the blast threw him over the edge. He fell through the air for a heart-stopping half second, then slammed into the ground, landing on a few corpses. Jack nearly blacked out from the pain. As it was, his head went swimmy for a bit there and he fought viciously to hold onto his consciousness. Slowly, it went away, and he began to regain control of his body, which just felt like one big bruise now.

"Jennifer," he moaned, getting to his hands and knees, shoving the pain aside to the best of his ability, but it was almost overwhelming. He raised his helmeted head. His visor was cracked and smeared with blood. Frustrated, he got up onto his knees, undogged the helmet and threw it away. "Jennifer!" he called.

"Stop shouting, I've got a headache."

Relief, the most powerful he'd felt since this whole goddamned mess had begun, flooded through him. He jerked towards the sound of her voice and saw her getting to her feet. She lurched over to him, smiling at him.

"I thought you were dead," he whispered, gasping for breath. "I...oh man..."

"I know. I'm okay," she said. "Well, for the most part. It was a ricochet that hit me in the back. Armor managed to deflect it, but the force of the blast sent me forward and I couldn't catch myself. I fell," she explained.

"It's dead," he said, almost falling. Jennifer crouched by his side, then groaned and sat down heavily with him. "It's dead. We killed it."

She nodded slowly, looking past him. "We killed it," she agreed.

They sat there for a long time, bleeding, aching.

"We need to find a way home," he murmured.

"That'll be hard. Even if we can find a way back up there, there's no certainty the teleports will even take us back," Jennifer replied.

"They don't seem to go both ways, not all of them," he muttered. Jack raised his head again. "Let's look in there." He pointed to the building.

Jennifer sighed. "That means we have to stand up."

Jack just nodded. It took several minutes, but the two of them finally got up. They took a moment to pick through the remains as they staggered along, leaning heavily on each other, managing to find shotguns and some shells among the dead. There could be survivors. There probably would be. But they made it to the building without running into anything, found a door and opened it up. There was nothing alive inside the cavernous structure. It resembled a warehouse. And it was empty...except for another gateway surrounded by black crystals in the dead middle of the building. The two of them stood before it, staring at it for a long while.

"Well...into the wild black yonder?" he asked finally.

Jennifer nodded. "Don't see much other choice...who goes first?"

"We go together," he replied.

They stepped onto the pad and disappeared in a flash of black light.


	47. EPISODE 01: Epilogue

Jack reappeared in a flash of black light.

It was less awful this time, at least, the feeling. But…

He looked around. Jennifer was missing. And he was in a small chamber of green brick. The walls were covered with flowing blood and he could see iron bars built into the bricks. Jack took a quick look around, feeling panic rising. Jennifer was nowhere to be found, and there was no obvious way out of the small room. He saw a grinning Imp staring in at him through one of the iron bars and quickly grabbed for the shotgun he'd scavenged.

Only there was no shotgun.

No armor. No guns. Nothing at all.

He was naked and unarmed.

More Imps were coming now, on the other side of the bars. They began to hiss and cackle mercilessly at him, reaching in, clawing at him.

One of them grabbed his neck.

Jack tried to scream, tried to fight, but he was caught.

He was dying…

* * *

Jack jerked awake, gasping and sitting straight up. He heard someone else gasp beside him and looked around, taking everything in frantically. His eyes first fell to Jennifer, who was staring up at him, eyes wide with worry, her pale face ghostly and beautiful in the soft luminosity offered by distant stars.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"I..." he looked around the room he was, felt the comforting weight of memory settle into his mind. "I was just having a nightmare," he said, slowly laying back down.

"I'm sorry," she said, and moved against him beneath the blankets, wrapping her arms around him, pressing her nude body to his.

"Me too," he muttered.

"I've been having them too. I think we're gonna be stuck with them for a little while."

He nodded tiredly. He was exhausted, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. Not right away. To distract himself, to help reassure himself that it was all okay, that it had all worked out in the end, (for the most part), he thought about the past three days. They had been a pretty long three days, but mercifully free of combat.

The final black crystal teleporter had deposited them right back to where they had started, back on Mars City. Jack had no idea, even now, why that was. If it was just total blind luck or maybe something that Fielding had done or even that the Mastermind was using it for its own demented purposes. But they came through, and with their armor and guns, too. Jack thought it must've been the Mastermind causing that to happen, when they came through naked.

They had gone in search of Kelly and Fielding.

Both men were dead. They'd been killed by the demonic horrors before Jack and the others could succeed. He didn't know what had gotten Fielding, but a group of Imps and Demons had jumped Kelly. He'd been surrounded in the Marine HQ by a good dozen bullet-riddled corpses. The old bastard had gone down fighting.

After running the scanners one more time, and confirming that they were, in fact, working, Jack and Jennifer confirmed that they were the last two humans left alive on Mars, and certainly on Phobos or Deimos.

Jack prayed that there were no living humans in Hell.

They had received a call, an answer to a distress call that had been sent out previously, within hours. It was a Marine Recon ship that had picked up the signal and was on their way. They would be there in a little over a day. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn't respond, and Jack could get no one else on the radio as well.

So he and Jennifer had done what they could to tend to themselves. They had locked themselves up in the Administrator's Wing, which sported luxurious apartments, cafeterias, and medical facilities. They had taken full advantage of those. The very first thing they'd done, after securing the area and locking it down as much as was physically possible, was take a shower. They'd done a cursory job of tending to their wounds, then they had found the most comfortable bed they could, made love and had fallen into a deep, long sleep.

It was a dangerous gamble, but they were simply too wiped to do anything else.

They'd woken up some strange, distant time twelve hours later, starving to death. Or at least that's what it felt like. They had taken another long, hot shower, then grabbed a huge meal in the cafeteria, then had taken the time to do a more thorough job of tending to their wounds. Jack's shoulder was definitely going to scar, and he had a few more scars to boot from all this. They both did. Neither cared. They'd come out the other side alive and relatively intact. It was more than they had honestly thought was going to happen.

They'd simply relaxed the rest of the time, eating and napping, having sex whenever they could work up the energy. After all they'd gone through, this felt like a bonus. When the Marine Recon ship had arrived, a small but fast thing, they'd spent four solid hours explaining everything that had happened, doing everything they could to convince the small crew of men and women aboard. And, given the carnage on Mars City, and the fact that Deimos was still missing, they didn't have a difficult time believing them.

Jack remembered then, way back when on Phobos, when they had downloaded copies of the information, the incriminating evidence. Well, that was long gone now. Lost to the Phobos Gate. But there was enough data left in the cores here on Mars City that he and Jennifer had a fair amount of damning, hard proof to show the Marines. After confirming that there was, in fact, no one left alive on Mars or on Phobos, they had set a course for Earth at maximum speed. Jack had wanted to call ahead, but they couldn't.

A surprise solar flare had fried their comms. They could receive, but not send.

And now he was coming awake after almost forty eight hours of being on the ship. They weren't that far away now, he saw as he checked the time on the clock mounted on the wall above the bed he and Jennifer were sharing.

"You know, I can think of something to help with those nightmares," Jennifer said.

"Oh?" he replied, and she placed a hand on his shoulder, pushing him onto his back.

"Oh indeed," she said, and pressed her lips against his.

The wall-mounted comm crackled to life. _"Ward, Taylor, get out here. Something's come up."_ It was Pierce, the man in charge of the ship.

Both of them sighed and he reached up and hit the respond button. "What is it?" he asked.

" _It's important. We've got a distress call from the moon. I think it's related to whatever happened to you on Mars."_

They both looked at each other and a bolt of cold black fear shot through him. "We'll be right there," he said.

Seven minutes later, they were dressed and on the bridge with Pierce and two others, the pilot and his second in command.

"What's the situation?" Jack asked.

"Our troubles have only gotten worse," Pierce replied. "Comms are almost dead, we're limited to very short-range signals, and our sensors have gone on the shits." He turned to the pilot. "Play it back for them."

A woman's voice, sounding tired but determined, came out of the speakers amid a haze of static. _"I repeat this is...zzt...eant Kyra Morgan on UAC Lunar One...zzt...immediate assistance. I am declaring an emergency..."_

The message faded out.

"That's all we got," Pierce said.

"Shit," Jack muttered.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

Jack looked at him. "You're asking me?"

"After learning that Hell is apparently a real place and demons are real too, I'm feeling a little out of my depth."

Jack frowned, considering it, looking first at Jennifer, then back at Pierce. "We should check it out," he said. "How far out are we?"

"Half an hour," the pilot said.

"Do it. Divert course," Pierce said.

"Yes, Sergeant," the pilot replied.

The ship readjusted position and began to head towards the unknown.


	48. EPISODE 02: Isolation

**EPISODE TWO  
** _–THE_ _SHORES OF HELL–_

* * *

Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan opened her eyes to a world of bleak gray pain.

For several seconds, she felt nothing but that pain. She _knew_ nothing but pain. She had absolutely no idea where she was and icy black fear infected her body like a toxin. She blinked several times. Something was wrong, that much was obvious. But...where the fuck was she? She tried to move and fear began to morph into panic as she realized she was in a confined space with hardly any real room for movement.

Kyra jerked violently, then did so again, and pain flared as she hit her forearm against something hard and unyielding. That made her at least stop moving for a few seconds, which was enough time for training to kick down her mental doors and at least temporarily subdue her fear and confusion. It made room for logic and rationality.

Reason the situation out.

Closing her eyes, Kyra took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

When she opened her eyes again, everything seemed to be sharper, the world coming to her with a hard clarity.

She was behind glass.

No, she realized, she was behind two panes of glass. One was in front of her face, a faceplate, a helmet. The second was about a foot and a half ahead of her. It was cracked, though the crack didn't look terribly bad. Beyond that...what appeared to be miles and miles of ashy gray rock. Though in the distance she thought she could see maybe some kind of reddish-brown mountains. Where the hell was she? Where had she been?

Where was the _ship_ for that matter!?

That thought knocked loose several others. Realization came down hard on her: she was inside of an escape pod. Kyra blinked a few more times and slowly looked around the interior of the small thing she was in, confirming that it was, in fact, an escape pod. Okay, so, something had gone wrong. A fresh burst of pain assaulted her skull and Kyra winced. She wanted to reach up and gently probe the place that hurt, sure that she was bleeding, but she was in a fully contained atmospheric suit. Why didn't she remember putting that on?

Her memories were foggy at best, and for now, she put her attempts to excavate them aside. Right now, she was in an escape pod with limited power and oxygen. Unsurprisingly, the UAC had skimped on the pods. So that meant she had to pray that somehow, someway, she had landed somewhere not far from a place with heat and power and atmosphere. This place looked pretty grim, wherever it was. She shifted around and managed to get the straps holding her in place undone with some careful maneuvering.

Now somewhat more free to move about, she twisted to the right and found a small screen mounted on the wall. It was intact. Working as fast as she could, she used the pod's limited abilities to scan the immediate area, looking for signs of life and power signatures. While that was running, she typed at the little wristpad mounted on her suit and ran a check of it. Obviously, she was going to have to leave this pod at some point and there didn't seem to be very much of an atmosphere out there. What sky there was looked very thin.

Both checks came back at about the same time and delivered a little bit of good news. The suit itself was intact and she had about an hours' worth of oxygen. The scan from the pod confirmed that the area was totally lifeless for a quarter mile, which was the pod's maximum scanning range. However, it did bring back a single hit: there was a weak energy signature a little less than a quarter mile behind her.

"Well, great," she whispered, then winced as another bolt of pain hit her.

It was time to get moving.

Before cracking the seal, Kyra took a moment to, as thoroughly as she could, search the escape pod. It didn't have anything of any real value in it. Weren't these things at least supposed to come with a damned emergency medical kit? Kyra sighed and, pushing aside her mounting frustration with the situation, broke the seals.

The front door of the pod cracked open, and immediately the atmosphere inside of it vented and bled away into the significantly lighter atmosphere beyond. As she stepped out, Kyra's hand fell automatically to her hip, where her pistol should have been. Except it wasn't there. Sighing, she took a moment to check all her pockets, but there was nothing. All she had was her uniform and this suit. A nice start, she supposed.

But she felt naked without a weapon.

Kyra turned around and suddenly had an answer.

"Oh," she said quietly, staring up into the sky.

Jupiter hung there before her. She could even see the Great Red Spot. "Well, that answers that question," she muttered, then frowned. Well, sort of. She was on _a_ moon of Jupiter. If she had to guess, either Europa or Io. Well, that was a half-decent start, she supposed, and then refocused her efforts. Had to get to that energy source. It was probably another pod. Maybe it had someone inside of it that knew more than she did.

As she set off, marching across the grim surface of the moon, Kyra began to remember.

Kyra Morgan was a Marine, and damned proud to be one.

Which was why it was so humiliating that she was Space Marine, little more than a rent-a-cop for the goddamned Union Aerospace Corporation. But it was the only way she had been able to not only stay a Marine, but maintain her rank. After what had happened...well, she was honestly lucky that they hadn't court-martialed her ass.

But that was all behind her now. Or so she kept telling herself. No, her lot in life was the UAC and working these crap jobs they gave her until she asked enough times to be part of the real goddamned Corps again and get rotated back to Earth. She supposed, Kyra figured miserably as she stalked across the dead surface of wherever the hell she was, that she should be happy. It could be a lot worse. Okay, well, right _now_ was pretty bad, but in a big-picture kind of way. She could be out fighting the enemies of her corporate masters…

Instead of the enemies of her political masters.

At least the politicians still pretended like they cared.

Kyra sighed. No, they really didn't. Not anymore. If they ever had. What was that quote she'd heard about war? War is the young and stupid killing each other at the bidding of the old and bitter, or something like that. How miserably true, and it was only getting worse. That was part of the appeal of her job out here, though.

It was...peaceful.

As much as Kyra wasn't a peaceful woman and preferred to be knee-deep in the shit with the other grunts, there was a certain aspect to the peace and quiet of outer space that she hadn't expected to find. Up ahead, a shape began to resolve. She paused, studying it, and realized that she was looking at a land rover of some kind.

Okay, so...that was a good sign, right?

It was a sign of life. A land rover wouldn't be out here if there wasn't some kind of outpost or structure. They weren't carrying any kind of vehicles like this on the ship she'd been serving on. The...the...the fact that she couldn't recall its name freaked her out. Kyra struggled to recall it for a few more seconds, then gave it up in a frustrated burst of anger. She let out an annoyed huff and her visor fogged up briefly.

As she stalked across the surface of whatever moon she was on, the name suddenly came back to her. The _UAC Icarus_.

Of course.

What a fine name for a ship.

It wasn't like it was asking for trouble or anything. Kyra didn't think of herself as a particularly spiritual or superstitious person, but she learned you ignored your instincts at your own peril. Especially as a warrior on a battlefield. She might have left the battlefield, but her instincts hadn't left her. Something had felt off ever since signing up with the UAC. At first she'd chalked it up to just hating having a corporate overlord, but as time wore on, she thought it was something else. As if some dark shadow hung over everything the UAC did.

She'd sure heard enough shady rumors in her time.

Kyra's instincts immediately jerked, like a seismograph sensing a powerful but unseen tremor deep in the earth, as she made the final approach on the land rover and got a good look at the driver's side window. It was cracked, and there was definitely blood all along the interior. Not a good sign. She hurried forward and almost yanked the door open, but that would depressurize the cabin. It was standard protocol to be wearing a suit inside of a vehicle like this, but she didn't know the situation, the circumstances.

She spied a dark figure beyond the bloodied glass and knocked on the window, and almost called out to them.

But they probably wouldn't hear her, not with this thin an atmosphere and this much glass between them. She knocked again, harder, but the dark figure remained unmoving. Sighing, she moved around to the front of the vehicle, to look in through the front windshield. As soon as she did, she knew why the figure wasn't responding or moving, and knew that whoever he'd been, the guy never would be moving again.

He was dead.

He didn't have a helmet on, though he had on a suit. There was a gunshot wound in his head, a bloody crater. Yes, this was definitely a very bad situation. Kyra looked around, wincing slightly as a roll of pain began through her own head once again. She remained alone, for now. Moving over to the driver's side door, she yanked on it. It opened up and the body tumbled out. There was a pistol still clutched in the dead man's hand. Kyra glanced inside the cabin and saw that it was otherwise unoccupied.

"What the fuck is going on here?" she whispered as she knelt and pried the pistol out of the death grip. In the end, she had to snap two of the man's fingers. She checked the magazine quickly and saw that it was nearly topped off. Apparently he'd just spent the one bullet capping himself. What in the hell for? She was tempted to write it off as a simple suicide, it was known to happen. Not something that the UAC or anyone who had interests out in space liked to talk about, but stir crazy and cabin fever took on a whole new meaning when you were forced to stay inside of a vessel or station or outpost and there was nothing but death waiting for you outside of every airlock, beyond every window and every bulkhead.

But as she began to pat him down for supplies, (an automatic reaction to seeing corpses in unknown or combat situations at this point), she started to see telltales of some kind of combat. She recognized his suit, the blue jumpsuit of a technician, and a UAC technician at that, given the emblem on his chest. The suit was ripped in a few places, and burned in a few others, and it looked like someone had taken a shot at him and had a near miss with his shoulder. What in the fuck had happened?

She managed to find another magazine for the pistol in his pockets, but nothing else. With a sigh, she stepped over his corpse and got into the rover, then slammed the door shut and studied the interior, hunting for anything useful. Her mind kept trying to reboot, like an old engine trying to turn over, as she hunted through the compartments, the dashboard, under and behind the seat, but it just couldn't seem to catch.

Her brain felt like pulling the trigger on a gun that was out of ammo.

After her search turned up nothing worthwhile, she turned her attention to the dashboard. It was sprayed with a bit of blood, but intact. There was a screen built into it and it displayed what little information was currently available. The first thing she noticed was that the rover was on reserve power now, and it wouldn't last much longer. Whatever she did, it would have to be fast. She set to work, first pushing the rover's scanners as far as they could go, again hunting for signs of life or power signals.

As it was completing this task, she saw a radio beside the screen and a bolt of fear shot through her. Communications. Why hadn't she thought of that? That should have been right there at the forefront of her brain from the second she woke up. Had that knock to the head done some serious damage?

How was that for fucking terrifying?

The situation itself was already bad enough, but if she couldn't trust herself? Her own damned head? She grabbed the radio and took a moment to turn it on, then patch it into her suit, since it came with a basic comms suite.

"This is Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan of the United Marine Corps to anyone, over," she said, and waited, listened.

There was nothing.

"I repeat, this is Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan of the United Marine Corps to anyone. If you are receiving this transmission, respond immediately, over."

Still nothing but dead air.

"Shit," she whispered, putting it back.

A flash of light from the screen made her jump. She realized that her scan had come back. This time there were still no life signs, but there were three more energy signatures. Two of them were very faint, but one was a lot stronger. It had to be a structure, though probably not a very big one. "Perfect," she whispered.

Just as she was beginning to even consider starting up the rover and maybe seeing how far she could drive it, the lights suddenly died and everything went dark. "Yeah, perfect," she muttered and left the rover.

She stared down at the body she'd pulled from the cabin for a moment. No nametag. Reaching down after a bit of deliberation, Kyra picked him up, put him back in the front seat, and then slammed the door shut.

It was as close as she was going to get to a funeral. She took a moment to check the rear of the rover, where she found a small cargo compartment. There was supposed to be emergency supplies stashed back there, chief among them oxygen tanks, but there was nothing, and whatever oxygen might have been in the cabin had vented, and she didn't have the time or the tools to tap into whatever reserves might possibly be left, hidden somewhere in the frame of the vehicle. So she left the rover behind.

The way the power signals were coming from had a rise in the land between her and them.

She walked up it, continuing to try and piece together how she'd ended up here.

Then she crested the rise, and stopped for a few seconds, simply staring. There was a vast expanse, a huge plain waiting for her. She saw the two power signatures: escape pods, like hers. She saw the larger power signal: a building, as she'd suspected, and not a very big one. But it was what lay beyond that that caught her attention.

More structures, bigger ones, in the far distance.

And, much farther than that: the wrecked, smoldering remains of the _Icarus_.

"Fuck today," she growled, then set off down the other side of the rise.


	49. EPISODE 02: Something in the Shadows

So far, the situation was a bust.

The first pod she'd checked out had a corpse in it, one she recognized. One of the technical staff that she hadn't really gotten to know too well. He was a pasty, kind of scrawny guy who mostly kept to himself. He'd not gotten secured properly in the pod and the crash had killed him. He didn't have anything of any real value on him, and neither did his pod. The second pod was at least empty, so either it had launched on accident and then popped when it had hit the surface, or, more likely, whoever was in it had walked away.

Someone who, hopefully, knew more than she did.

Her mind also settled as she crossed the surface of the moon, now making her way towards her next destination: the lone structure. Kyra remembered that the _Icarus_ had been in the process of coming back. She had been onboard that ship for close to a month. That's how long tours tended to last. So far, since signing up with the UAC, she'd done six of these. Six miserable months out in the deeper reaches of the solar system, trying not to go crazy, trying to keep well-maintained, well-trained, preparing for some kind of emergency.

There'd been none.

Well, not until now.

This particularly boring job had involved taking a series of scans of Neptune and its moon Triton. There was always the off chance of some kind of attack, or the crew might, in some capacity, go a little crazy, or a malfunction or meteor strike or something of the like, which was why the UAC insisted on having some Marines on standby. But it had all gone according to plan. Probably the only good thing about it was that Kyra had managed to get laid several times with a friend she'd made during the last tour who'd ended up getting thrown onboard the _Icarus_ with her. He was probably ten years younger than her, a cute Corporal named Garret, and he was a pretty good friend with benefits. He was skilled and discreet.

He understood from the beginning that sex was as far as it would ever go.

She wondered, suddenly, if he had survived the incident.

As she zeroed in on the structure, Kyra pushed herself, strained her memories, trying to clear the mental fog. They had been coming back, and...there had been some kind of distress call. Yes. She remembered now. It had been the middle of the night, inasmuch as there _was_ any kind of night or day in space. She and Garret had been asleep in her cabin. A call had roused her from that sleep, the pilots warning them that they were picking up a distress call and they were obligated to investigate, given that it was a Union Aerospace Corporation facility.

She and Garret had gotten up, showered, and dressed as fast as they could, then had started making for the bridge.

And…

Something had happened. She remembered an explosion and…

Nothing else after that.

Obviously someone had gotten her to a pod and into this suit. Probably Garret. Had he made it out okay? Had any of the others? There had been a small squadron of Marines onboard under her command, and a few dozen technicians, medics, pilots, and the other random assortment of personnel that made ships run.

So far, she just had one confirmed KIA.

Well, hopefully the answers would be forthcoming. She had arrived at the structure. It wasn't very large, whatever it was, just a squat, metal thing. As she moved in towards one of the windows, she activated her radio. It wouldn't be as powerful with the rover boosting it, but it should still be worth something.

"This is Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan to anyone receiving, please respond. Over."

Still nothing. She peered in through the window. There was a room waiting beyond. She could see things: a pair of cots, an examination table, some cabinets and counterspace, several crates. From what she could see, the place looked like it had been raided. All of the drawers to the cabinets were open, the crates cracked open as well. Well, great. Kyra moved over to the airlock and tried it. It opened up. She stepped in and cycled through.

As she stepped inside and moved to clear the area, her sense that it had been cleaned out only grew stronger. The only other door, at the back of the room, led to a simple bathroom. The mirror hung open, the medicine cabinet behind it not exactly empty, but clearly ransacked. After making sure the area was secure, she took a further moment to hunt through all the various cabinets, drawers, and crates that occupied the area.

This was clearly meant to be some kind of emergency cache, and clearly some kind of emergency had happened, because it had been cleaned out. There were some supplies leftover, but almost none of it was useful. As she grabbed up whatever jumped out at her as valuable, Kyra felt...good. Okay, good might not be the best word. But she felt switched on, dialed in. She was actually _doing_ something. This was the kind of shit she'd trained for, the kind of situation she'd endured and adapted to. An emergency.

Consequently, the next several minutes passed by smoothly and quickly. Now that the immediate area was secure and she'd gathered up whatever supplies she could find, she moved back to the bathroom and locked herself in. She took off her helmet and her suit, then checked herself over for wounds. She only found a few cuts and scrapes through rips in her uniform. The only real injury was her head, which, she realized, had a hasty patch-job done to it. She winced as she peeled away the bandage, finding blood.

Scalp wounds sucked.

She studied the wound in the mirror, pulling aside strands of red hair to do so. "Hell," she muttered as she looked it over. Finally, she ended up cleaning it as best she could manage with the supplies she'd gathered, then patched it up again. She took the opportunity to wash her face and get the blood off her neck and jaw where it had leaked from the wound, then pulled her suit back on and popped a few painkillers.

With that out of the way, she packed up the medical supplies into a portable kit and clipped it to her belt, then secured her helmet. As she headed for the airlock, intent on hoofing it to that compound in the distance, she stopped suddenly. She'd hit her head, and had been missing things ever since waking up in the escape pod. Did she have everything? Had she thought of everything? She closed her eyes and cleared her thoughts.

A half-minute later, she had it.

Oxygen.

She'd forgotten to refill her oxygen, and she was at less than ten percent. "Shit," she growled, tracking down a reserve tank built into the wall and hooking up to it. At least it hadn't been tapped dry. She brought herself back up to a hundred percent and then ran another check on her suit. Once it came back secure, she headed for the airlock. Several thoughts shifted through her head, questions, fears, theories.

There was so much she didn't know about this place, about her situation.

Anything at all could have happened, could _be_ happening.

It was obvious that something had gone down here, if they'd issued some kind of distress called. As the airlock finished its cycle and she stepped out, Kyra felt a jolt of hope as her radio crackled to life.

"Hello? Is anyone there? This is Staff Sergeant Kyra-"

She was cut off by what sounded like someone screaming. It was distant and scrambled, but she definitely heard someone screaming.

Abruptly, there was a meaty thwacking sound and the screaming cut off.

Then a new sound came onto the airwaves, one that chilled her.

It sounded like…

Eating. Like animals eating. Like a feeding time of some sort.

Abruptly, the transmission died away. Theories and questions began to fall away, replaced almost entirely by fear.

She stared at the compound ahead of her and, after several seconds, forced herself to begin putting one foot in front of the other.

She had no choice: go there or eventually die of suffocation.

* * *

That bad feeling that had taken root from the second she woke up, that ominous tension that was not unlike the notion of being watched, only grew with ever step Kyra took towards the compound. It was obvious that the first structure she was approaching was a port. She saw the telltale of the control tower ascending several stories above a huge, squarish structure. The fact that she could see the UAC logo stamped huge and obvious against the bland gunmetal gray structure's exterior did nothing to help abate that feeling.

The message, if it could be called that, had rattled her more than she'd care to admit. Fighting on Earth was, to be sure, a pretty awful predicament. She'd seen combat all over the place, ranging from the Battle of Alaska to putting down secessionist forces in Ukraine to taking on mercenaries in Bosnia, and a lot of other places in between. It was shit, but it was shit that she was deeply familiar with by now. She knew all about engagement, about storming a place, taking a hill, retreating, fighting in all sorts of awful, nasty environments.

But there was something just... _creepy_ about outer space.

Everything had an edge of unease to it, an air of uncertainty. She tried to shake these thoughts as she finally made the final approach to the hangar. She tried her radio again, reluctantly, but got nothing, just dead air. She hunted down a manual access airlock, since she didn't want to make a big entrance if she could help it. She had two dead bodies on her hands so far, and a quickly growing collection of puzzle pieces. And now here she was, at the airlock, and there was no more time for thinking, it was time to actually _do_ something.

She hit the button and the exterior airlock doors opened up. Kyra pointed her pistol inside, half-expecting someone to be waiting for her, some enemy or hostile or...Kyra shook her head and stepped into the empty airlock, then hit the cycle button. This situation was bad enough, she didn't need to go unlocking the footlocker of irrational fears that she'd buried somewhere deep and dark in a catacomb somewhere far within her mind. You kind of had to take a 'lock it up and throw away the key' approach when it came to certain fears in her line work. A certain amount of fear was healthy, but what was threatening to come up now was bad stuff.

This was the kind of fear you felt when it was the middle of the night and you were alone in the house, there was a bad storm going and you thought maybe you heard a noise. Oh, and to top it all off, you were twelve, your parents had decided to test your responsibility by letting you stay home for the weekend instead of driving a state over to visit Great Aunt I Don't Fucking Like Her And Neither Do You, and you decided to abuse this trust by staying up too late watching a late night special on serial killers.

Kyra shook her head and made herself focus as the airlock finished its cycle.

Yeah, definitely didn't need that kind of fear rattling around inside her. She aimed her pistol at the doors as they parted in the middle, sliding open. A mostly empty room with a stack of crates in one corner and a few EVA lockers along the right wall awaited her inspection. She carefully swept the room for signs of life, and although she found nothing, Kyra's gaze settled on one of the Extra Vehicular Activity lockers.

It hung open, ransacked and vacant.

It sent a lone but powerful echo of apprehension shooting through her. Was she looking at the resting place of the suit the dead man in the rover had hastily pulled on before fleeing? It was possible, likely even. She moved on, taking a moment to check the crates. No clues there, they were empty. She moved over to the only other door in the room and reached for the open button, but her finger hesitated an inch from contact.

She was missing something again, something small, but potentially crucial.

Her oxygen. She was still using it. The airlock had confirmed that the internal atmosphere was stable, so she cut off her own internal supply and opened up the vents. She waited for the new atmosphere to filter in, to give her hints and clues, and warnings. And they came. She immediately picked up on a scent of blood, and of something burning. But there was something beneath it, embedded within the smell, something much worse that made her combat senses crank up. She tensed, squeezing the pistol, and almost fired off a shot.

Kyra made herself relax a bit and tried to figure out what she was smelling, but she couldn't. She had no idea what it was, what it might be, only that it was dangerous. Resolved not to get herself killed and figure out what in the hell was going on here, she hit the button. The door slid open, revealing a broad, open space: a hangar bay. Her eyes picked out the usual litter of crates, tables, workbenches, and toolboxes scattered around the area. But what drew her gaze like iron filings to a magnet were the things that didn't belong.

The blood stains.

The pockmarks of bullet holes.

The spent shell casings.

The scattered tools and spare parts.

Some kind of attack had definitely happened. Was this the move that her corporate overlords had been paranoid of? Some kind of hostile takeover or opportunistic strike by mercenaries or criminals? Or was this something totally different? She had no idea, but her instincts kept her on edge as she stuck to the wall and began to check over the hangar, looking for hiding places, for survivors, for whoever had done this.

She heard nothing but the faint hum of power and the quiet respiration of oxygen. No voices, no movement, nothing. It took close to five minutes, but at the end of it, Kyra ended up by primary exit out into the main structure. She looked back once over the hangar, noting the utter lack of vehicles, of any kind. She sure as hell wasn't walking out of here. The facility beckoned, and so she left the hangar, carefully checking the lengthy passageway that lay beyond. It stretched away from her in either direction for several hundred meters. It was a quick way to access all of the hangars and garages, and Kyra could easily envision a heavy traffic of dozens of crate-toting personnel and hover-dollies and industrial-yellow forklifts.

A proliferating hive of buzzing activity.

But now it was a derelict shell of metal. There were more signs of conflict and some of the lights were flickering uncertainly. Kyra spotted a pair of corpses and hurried over to the nearest one, keeping a sharp eye out for hostiles. She got to the first body and crouched by it. He was a Space Marine, more than likely one of the locals. He'd been shot in the neck and had bled out. Someone had also picked the body over for ammo and supplies, and he just had on a uniform, no armor. The second corpse, a local technician, was in similar shape.

"Damn," she whispered as she left the corpses behind and made for the far right end of the passageway.

Her destination was the control tower.

There might, if she found some small ration of luck, be a few answers there.

She struggled to maintain a balance between moving stealthily enough for safety's sake and moving fast enough to get the hell to her destination and get some desperately-needed intel. She checked whatever open doors and offshoot alcoves she passed, finding often nothing but dim rooms and passageways of UAC-stamped metal. There was more blood, more bullet holes, but no more bodies. The sense of ominous tension only swelled as Kyra reached the entryway to the control tower. One of the doors was half-open, partially slipped into its niche in the wall, leaving maybe a foot of space.

To make matters worse, the doors were stuck like this. Sighing, she peered slowly through, gun at ready, and saw a receiving area and stairs. Sensing nothing in the immediate area, Kyra slipped through and then looked up. The stairs wrapped the interior of the tower, rising several stories. There was an elevator recessed beneath the stairs to her left. She ignored it, barely trusting elevators to work even when everything was running properly. Her boots clanged with an awful loudness as she moved up the winding stairs.

And yet, no one came to investigate the clamor, no alarms were raised. Kyra kept her anxious speculation under wraps as she made the final ascent to the control tower's peak. A single door awaited her, closed against the world. Pistol still ready, and almost trembling in anticipation at this point, she moved up and hit the access button.

The door slid open to reveal…

Just another hostile-free zone. Kyra sighed after clearing the room. Anti-climaxes were welcome in situations of life and death, but she was beginning to reach the point where she almost _wanted_ there to be some kind of attack, if only to break the damned tension. When you saw an enemy, you could get a decent of idea of whether or not you could deal with it. When you had no idea where the enemy was, it was easy to imagine them as bigger and badder than they really were...if they even existed at all. But she didn't believe she was alone here.

It was obvious that the control room had seen some combat. A few of the screens were cracked or outright shattered, though thankfully the windows that made up most of the walls had remained intact. Although she knew it took a bit more than a few rounds to blow out one of those windows, they always made her nervous. But beyond that glass, she could see the rest of the facility. Kyra slowly walked to the far window.

Her gaze swept the surface of the moon.

There were four other large structures spread out across the area. They were huge, gray proliferations of metal walls and glass windows, of rooms and interconnecting corridors, each of them making some strange, abstract shape.

"There," she whispered as, somewhere distant, outside one of the farther back buildings, she saw the silent spark of gunfire. Someone was still fighting…

But who? Why?

It was definitely too distant to pick out any relevant details, and Kyra came back to herself. She turned back towards the mess of equipment, then quickly set to work. Several minutes ticked by as she dug into the internal network of the facility, and quickly discovered that it was a mess. Lots of information was simply cut off, links leading to nowhere, and she felt every extra wasted second by the long load times.

But finally, she teased out a few pieces of intel.

The first was that she was on Europa, currently in the UAC owned research facility called _Typhon Station_. The second was that something was wrong with the communications uplink, because she couldn't make the thing work for anything.

The third, and final, bit of information she received was that she was at a dead end, at least in regards to this control tower, because she couldn't find _anything_ of any other real value. Whatever damage had been done here must have severed it from the primary database. If she wanted to find any further intel, she'd had to do it the hard way and go looking. Her best bet, she surmised as she resisted the urge to smash the screen, was to find a security center. It had the added benefit of maybe having something a bit heavier than this sidearm she had. To make matters worse was the fact that there was no fucking map, not even of the building she was in.

Frustration mounting, Kyra left the control tower, pausing once to investigate the site of the firefight she'd seen earlier.

There was nothing there now.

Thoughts shifted and flowed jerkily through her head as she descended the stairwell, pistol in hand again, but they all came crashing to a sudden and powerful halt as she heard a sound. It was a footstep. She was on the last of the stairs and froze immediately, aiming at the doorway through which she'd come not all that long ago.

For several seconds, she remained still as a statue, waiting.

She was almost positive she'd heard that footstep, but as the seconds ticked by, she became less certain, wondering if perhaps she'd heard an echo of own heavy boots. She had good ears, but this was a nerve-wracking situation.

Just as Kyra began to move forward again, she heard someone mutter quietly.

Yes, someone was definitely there, just beyond the door.

She crept towards it, gun ready.


	50. EPISODE 02: Pure Terror

Whoever it was, they didn't seem to realize she was there.

Which seemed impossible, given how goddamned loud her boots were. Kyra waited and listened, trying to confirm what she thought she was hearing. Yeah...they were actually shuffling away from her. Why? Was it a trap? Could be. Could be someone else waiting just beyond the door to ambush her, distraction tactics. So what to do? Kyra remained still, hoping that whoever it was would come to the door, but the unknown person stayed out of sight. They groaned and shuffled a few more feet, then became still.

Kyra suppressed the urge to sigh. She couldn't just keep standing there. Well, the only wrong decision was no decision. She began moving slowly down the stairs. There was a grunt as she did so and she again came to a halt, waiting to see if whoever it was would come over. More shuffling footsteps, then nothing. Tightening her grip on the pistol, she finished moving down the stairs and crept up to the door.

Moment of truth.

Kyra moved quickly in front of the door, pistol aimed, ready to open fire if necessary, but hesitated as she caught sight of the figure in the corridor beyond. They were wearing a familiar yellow jumpsuit, the kind she always saw their pilots wearing. Some of the troops had taken to calling them canaries. Like a flash, an old phrase came to her: Canary in a coal mine. That made her shudder viciously as a tremor of real fear ripped through her again.

She realized that, even from behind, she recognized the figure before her.

Before she could think better of it, she opened her mouth and said: "Meyers."

Another warning grunt, and she immediately regretted her decision. Something was very wrong, something that had her instincts screaming at her. It wasn't just the fact that Meyers's suit was ripped in a few places, or that he had clearly bled a lot from a wound on his right shoulder. Nor was it the sounds he was making. It was more the slow way in which he was moving, the way he'd been shuffling around back and forth aimlessly for the past few moments.

And then she knew for certain that something was absolutely wrong with the man as he fully turned around and locked eyes with her.

The eyes currently embedded in Meyers's skull were no longer the eyes of a human being. They were glassy and milky with some strange white substance. And they had a faint glow to them. His face looked like it had cracked in a few places, almost like it was a porcelain mask. His veins were clearly visible, and stranger still, there was something almost leathery about his skin now. He let out another groan and began stumbling towards her, reaching for her with thoughtless, groping hands. His fingers were covered in blood.

"Meyers, stay back," she warned, hard steel coming into her voice.

She was being threatened, and she never reacted well to that. She aimed the pistol deliberately at him now.

Meyers gave absolutely no indication of being heard.

"Meyers, I said stay back. Stop moving. _Now._ "

Still nothing. If anything, he sped up.

Something was obviously completely fucked here. Was it some kind of virus? A disease or infection? It was the only thing she could come up with in that moment as he brain shrieked at her not to let him touch her, to get near her at all.

"Meyers, I will shoot your ass!" she roared as he hit the doorway and stuck one arm through the crack down the middle, groaning louder now, muttering incoherently as he reached for her. There was something mindless about what he was doing. He seemed less like a human being that might be sick and more like some kind of animal, or even a machine. Like he had been replaced with a robot that had broken badly.

"Meyers! I mean it!"

It was obvious he wasn't listening, and he was beginning to get through the door. She adjusted her aim, deciding to take the non-lethal approach first, hoping to, if at all possible, incapacitate the man. She didn't want to murder him.

Kyra shot him in the foot.

It didn't seem to phase him in the slightest. And the blood that began to ooze out...something was wrong with it, too. It was too thick, too syrupy. It was like the blood of a corpse that had died a few days ago.

It was coagulated.

What did _that_ mean!?

She adjusted her aim again and shot him in the thigh. More blood, no reaction. It was like he was impervious to pain. Meyers then made it through the door, and came right at her. Kyra reacted instinctively to the obvious threat: she raised her pistol up higher and put a shot right into his pale forehead.

That did it. He dropped like a rock and ceased all movements.

Despite how reviled she was by the corpse before her, Kyra felt drawn to it. She needed information. Intel was survival here. Keeping the body covered with her pistol as she advanced on it, because she didn't trust anything in this situation, Kyra got to Meyers and then flipped him over. She didn't know the man all that well. He was the co-pilot under Whitley...had she made it out? Kyra felt her stomach twist uncertainly as she stared at the corpse she'd made. Anger and terror and confusion roiled violently in her mind.

Before any one thing could take root, she heard a roar.

Not a grunt, not a growl, a roar.

It came from somewhere out in the base. Kyra jerked to her feet and moved forward, not wanting to be trapped here in this control tower. She shoved herself through the opening and looked down the length of the immense corridor.

The base came to awful, dark life all around her.

The growls became a broken chorus of living horror. Suddenly, she saw shapes emerging from several of the doors. Half a dozen. A dozen.

Two dozen.

They were the base personnel, she realized with a growing, yammering terror that was swelling in her mind, overwhelming her. She squeezed the trigger and punched a hole in the head of the nearest former human. That was when all of the now over thirty horrors let out screams and roars of fury and began coming for her, arms out and reaching. At least one of them had a weapon, and a bullet seared past her.

"Oh fuck this," she whispered as something snapped inside of her.

Unsure of what she was doing, Kyra turned and sprinted through the nearest open door, shooting another one of the shambling things in its open mouth. She came into a garage and slammed her fist on the close button behind her.

But the door didn't close.

She cried out in blind panic and punched the button again, and again. The door remained open. The horde of monstrous things were coming for her, getting closer, a cacophony of horror. Kyra felt her heart slamming painfully in her chest, which felt horribly tight, her breath coming short and fast. Looking around, she saw a collection of crates stacked in the corner. Without thinking about it, the second she saw that they led to a vent grate, she rushed over to the stack, holstered her pistol, and scrambled up the crates.

And then she was through the grate and into the vent and crawling.

* * *

The next segment of time came to her in a series of flashes.

Most of the time she was crawling through vents.

Sometimes she remembered looking out of a vent grate, and regretted it. At one point she saw a pair of men in shredded, bloodied uniforms crouched over a corpse in an office, chowing down, their faces smeared with blood. Another time she saw a beheaded Marine in hallway. And she saw more of the former base personnel. They seemed to be everywhere. Their groans haunted her as she crawled furiously through the vents.

When she fully came back to herself, Kyra was sitting on top of a sturdy pile of crates in a small room with barely enough space for her to sit, her head almost touching the ceiling. As she felt control fully reasserting itself, Kyra took a deep breath and slowly let it out. It had been a long time since she'd lost control, and she wasn't sure she'd ever snapped like this before. She hadn't realized just how much this whole thing was freaking her out, how stressed out she was. And she dealt with stress on a daily basis at this point.

That's what made the whole thing that much worse. Kyra had fought on battlefields for years now. She'd been in bad firefights, ambushes that she was lucky to walk away from. She'd been shot and stabbed and even set on fire once. She'd been in crashing ships at least half a dozen times. (One more time now.)

Even through the worst of it, she'd never fully lost control of her own mind.

As she sat there, Kyra zeroed in on the problem immediately. Although she'd been through a hundred different kinds of hell, she had never, not once, faced a…

She had to admit it to herself.

A zombie. Let alone a fucking army of them.

She was in outer space, after going through a crash landing, and now she was stranded in a facility that was overrun by goddamned, motherfucking zombies.

Zombies.

Never in a million years did Kyra think she would actually be facing down the living dead. But even as she thought this, she felt control reassert itself like a steel vault door locking into place. She could deal with zombies. They were slow, they were loud, they telegraphed their presence from a mile away. And they could apparently use weapons, if she was actually remembering that right, that one of them had taken a potshot at her, but she imagined they were shit shots. And she knew for a fact she could kill them.

She just needed to get headshots. And she was good at that.

"Okay...okay..." she whispered, slowly crawling to the edge of the crate pile she resided on, "I can do this. Just gotta get to a security center. Get a map, some more firepower, find other survivors," she said quietly.

Kyra reached the edge and looked down. She'd come to a small storage room. Bigger goals came to her as she first visually secured the area, then got down onto the metal plate floor. She had to get to Command Control. She knew each of these installations had a Command Control, where the answers she was seeking would more than likely be. That meant finding a bigger and better arsenal and getting out of this building.

Her first goal was leaving this room. Kyra took a moment to check over the crates and shelves, seeing if maybe there was anything of any real use, but it was all a bunch of tech parts that she had no need for. Moving over to the door, she waited and listened. Nothing but the hiss of oxygen and the hum of power, but that didn't necessarily mean much. A lot of the time these walls were built too sturdily to hear anything on the other side. But as she reached for the open button, an idea came to her: why risk moving through the hallways?

She'd already proven that she could move through the vents.

Kyra looked down at the pistol on her hip. She didn't have a lot in the way of spare ammo. She should conserve it if it all possible. Yes, if she was going to get out of this alive, she had to think tactically. Moving back across the room, she climbed to the top of the crate pile again, located the grate she'd used to come into this room and slipped back through. As she began crawling through the vents almost blindly, hunting fervently for an armory or security center of some kind, Kyra's mind began to go into overtime.

Zombies?

How in the unholy hell could there be zombies at a UAC station on Europa? But even as she asked this question, it somehow didn't seem too unlikely. It was just one of those things that felt like a pair of puzzle pieces fitting neatly together. Because everyone knew that the UAC was shady. Everyone knew that the UAC got up to all sorts of unknown shit out there in the dead space. What were they doing, locked away in their hermetically sealed chromed vaults? Only they knew, and some people who had a lot of money and power back on Earth as well.

How often had she found her mind wandering, theorizing on all the various things that the UAC scientists could be getting up to? Zombies...weren't actually impossible. Well, obviously. Then again, there was the question of whether or not they were actually zombies. What _was_ a zombie, anyway? There seemed to be different varieties. The supernatural kind, the virus kind, the coming back from the dead for no real reason kind, that was somehow almost, but not completely, different from the supernatural kind.

Virus seemed to be the winner. Hadn't she smelled something, _been_ smelling something ever since she stepped foot in this awful place? Could be the infection she was smelling. So what was the deal with these things? Was it bloodborne? Airborne? Was she already fucked? If so, what were the symptoms? Or did she need to get bitten or scratched in order to be turned? Well, there were more things on her list of shit to do now.

Find information about what in the hell was going on, and discover the truth behind these zombies, and if she was infected. If so, how to fix it. If not, how to avoid it. Until then, she just had to kill or avoid the undead, and, of course, lay her hands on some heavier firepower. Or even some more bullets for this sidearm would be a godsend.

The trip through the vents seemed to take forever.

She passed several bloody hallways, several more zombies, a few more storage rooms, a break room, some offices…

"Oh fucking finally," Kyra whispered as she looked through the latest vent. Her knees were aching like hell by now.

She saw the familiar telltale bank of monitors and at least one gun locker that signified a security center. It wasn't much, but it would be a step up. She cleared it as best she could visually from behind the grate, then opened it up and slipped down. Breathing a sigh of relief, she quickly confirmed that she had the little security office to herself and then moved over to the only door and locked it down. That sure, certain red the little keypad began to glow was strangely comforting. Kyra first moved over to the trio of gun lockers that occupied the back wall. Two of them hung open and empty. She managed to get the third open.

Then cursed.

It was basically empty. All that she could find were another pair of magazines for the pistol. Not even a damned shotgun or an SMG that the security forces were so fond of. Well, better than nothing she figured as she pocketed the spare magazines. From there, she moved over to the bank of monitors, though her trip there was brief. It was obvious that they were screwed. It looked like someone had emptied an assault rifle into them and the few that were left intact showed nothing but static. Sighing, she moved at last to the single workstation in the room.

It, at least, was still functional.

Although she quickly surmised that she wasn't going to get much out of here, either. As she sat there, frustrated and navigating painfully slow menus, she couldn't help but ask again: "What happened here?"

It was a question spoken to an empty room, but even as she felt this sentiment, Kyra couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching her. She turned around, away from the workstation, fervently searching the room. But there was nothing. She remained alone. Kyra turned back to the screen and froze. For a split second, just a bare fraction of time, the screen had turned a vicious red. But it flashed by so fast that she couldn't be sure if she'd actually seen it, or if it had been some kind of strange optical illusion or…

Maybe just a product of an overly taxed mind.

Kyra let out a huff of annoyance and kept working the controls until finally she had an actual map of the building. Not of the whole complex, just this building. It was a start at least. It wasn't all that big of a building, most of it taken up by the hangars and garages. And there was just one other security area on the map. Probably worth checking out. But...what was this red thing here? Kyra tapped on it and the map zeroed in.

"Shit," she growled as new data became available to her.

The way out, which was an exit lobby to a tram that would take her deeper into the area, was on a lockdown. Of course it was. She tried to raise it from there, but discovered that the lockdown was tied to someone's PDA, someone with high enough clearance. And...well, luck would have it, she could actually track that PDA. After using a few 'shortcuts' she wasn't supposed to know about. And it was apparently located in Vehicle Maintenance & Repair. Great. Kyra looked back up at the ventilation grate she'd come through.

"I don't want to go back in the vents," she muttered, then quickly reminded herself that she was a fucking Marine and to get the fuck over it. It was either that or throw away ammo she might need later shooting her ways through the hallways, and risk exposing herself to a potential unknown contaminant. So, vents it was.

She crawled back inside.

* * *

The second security center turned out to be a bust, being totally cleared out by the sorry bastards that had been stationed here when the shit went down. It took her about ten minutes to finally reach the repair bay. Looking out, she spied a few shuffling figures, but as far as she could tell from her vantage point, the place looked secure, all the exits closed off. So, it was time to go to work. Kyra hit the access button and slipped out, landing with a soft grunt on the floor. The nearest zombie, a man she didn't recognize in a technician's jumpsuit, turned towards her with a warning grunt. As soon as he, (it?), saw her, it began coming right for her.

Kyra raised the pistol, took aim, zeroing her sights right on one of its cloudy eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The sound was too loud for comfort, and it alerted every other zombie in the maintenance bay. It also turned the initial zombie's eye into a gory socket and dropped it like a rock. She shifted aim and punched a hole in the dark forehead of another technician. Switch aim, fire again. She did this three more times.

Then, as she shifted her aim one more time, she hesitated, though only for a second. She recognized the face. It was another one of personnel from her ship, a medic, a petite, pale blonde named Peters. Most of her right arm was missing and she was limping badly. Her mouth was smeared with old blood.

Kyra put her down, then waited a few seconds. Once nothing more came for her, she took a moment to pat down the bodies, rifling through pockets, but none of them had anything worthwhile. She sighed and lingered for a few seconds after finishing her search of Peters. She hadn't known the woman too well, but Peters always struck her as polite and competent. She'd had the notion that she'd been sleeping with Mora, one of the PFCs under Kyra's command. He'd also been a medic and they seemed to spend a lot of time together outside the med bay.

It didn't matter now, she supposed.

It took another five minutes to locate the PDA, which had a cracked screen and a bit of blood on it. Fearing it wouldn't work, she resisted the urge to cross her fingers or hold her breath as she tried to activate it. The screen flickered to life.

She dug in. "Well, Staff Sergeant Burns," she murmured as she sorted through the data, "looks like you were garbage at keeping records..."

There was hardly anything on the PDA. Just a few reports from over the past month, none of them within the last week, and she didn't have the time to go digging right now. But his security clearance looked like it would indeed get her through that lockdown. She pocketed the PDA and then crawled back into the vents. After another five minutes, she was at the locked down door and through it without a problem.

As she moved through the tomb-like lobby and located one of the trams still in its station, Kyra finally felt like she was making some real progress. There were a lot of things on the other side of this, and she hoped that at least some of them were good. After clearing the simple, boxy tram, she settled into the controller's seat, fired it up, and sent herself into the airlock, and then back out onto the dead, frozen surface of Europa.

And onward into the unknown.


	51. EPISODE 02: Not Human

Kyra felt strangely empty as the tram trundled slowly across the mute, dead surface of Europa. It was locked away inside of its own glass and steel tunnel, and she found herself absently hunting across the surface for…

She wasn't entirely sure what she was searching for.

Thoughts floated gently through her head, but none of them seemed to have any real substance. Right now, the world seemed distant and silent and faraway. Nothing seemed tangible. Even the chair she was sitting in, the console before her she was touching, hell, even the uniform enclosing her, none it felt like it had much weight. Reality seemed to have all the substance of cotton candy. Kyra knew she was in shock, but it was hard to really do anything about it. Zombies. Fucking zombies. Up ahead, Kyra saw something in the tunnel with her.

It wasn't moving, and she realized it was a dead body. A man in a blue technician's outfit. That seemed to provide a bit of an anchor for her, and she shook her head. She began slowly looking around the conductor's cabin, unsure of what she was searching for, until she laid eyes on a small compartment built into the wall. Reaching over, Kyra pulled it open and looked inside. She finally found what she was looking for in the form of an unopened bottle of water. She snagged it out of the mini-fridge, pulled off her helmet and drank deeply.

She ended up draining the whole thing.

For some reason, that really helped finish bringing her back. That and the fact that the next main structure was coming up now. She put her helmet back on and clamped down, making herself focus. She was beginning to get genuinely worried about the fact that her mind was having this much trouble keeping in the moment, keeping tasked properly. It was insanely dangerous. But in a way, it felt a little like trying to shoot a gun with broken fingers. Kyra stood up and stretched, feeling several of her joints pop in the process.

The tram slid into the airlock and began the cycling process.

Kyra took the opportunity to check over her pistol. She reloaded, then took a look out of the cabin window as the inner airlock doors slid open, revealing a flickering interior. Great sign. Made even better by the fact that she could see a few shambling figures on the receiving platform. Well, she'd done this before, she could do it again. As the tram finished locking into place, Kyra moved back to the main passenger cabin and got the pistol ready for action. The tram came to a full halt. There was a pause.

The doors opened.

Kyra was already aiming towards the nearest zombie and popped a shot right into its temple. The thing's pallid skull snapped to the side in a spray of old blood and brains, and it went down fast. The others milling about on the platform let out warning groans as they realized that something had changed in their environment. She didn't give them an opportunity to react any further. Adjusting her aim, Kyra fired off another shot, then shifted a bit further and squeezed the trigger again. Two more shots and the last of the zombies were dead.

She waited, but when no more enemies came, Kyra slipped out onto the platform and listened. Nothing but the soft hum of power and the quiet respiration of oxygen. She moved quickly among the corpses, patting down pockets, hunting for more ammo. All she managed to find for her troubles was a single magazine of ammo tucked away in a medic's pocket. Better than nothing. She transferred it to her own pocket and then took the time to check out all the little hidden niches and alcoves that seemed to proliferate along the shadowed peripheral of the loading platform. This place was a bit of a nightmare as a combat zone.

She found one more zombie, hidden away inside of a particularly dark niche, facing away from her. For a few seconds, she was utterly stymied, perplexed by what it could possibly be doing. It groaned and began to turn around, picking up on her presence, and she squeezed the trigger, as she'd already been aiming at its head. As it died and she searched its pockets, finding nothing, Kyra found herself wondering about how much intelligence they had left, how much humanity they had left. _Was_ there anything left?

Or were they just empty shells, meat machines running off of some unknown organic operating system?

Right now, it didn't really matter, she supposed. She made for the door that led into the primary structure and hit the access button. It was time to get a move on. She needed answers, needed to find a survivor who knew more than she did, or at least a terminal with some real damned data on it. The door revealed an entry lobby and as she scoped the situation out, taking it nice and easy, Kyra felt a sense of relief hit her as she saw another security center, tucked away to the left. The widows were shot through with cracks from sustained gunfire in several places, but it had held up. The UAC built to last, at least. After ensuring that she was actually alone in the ingress, Kyra moved over to the door and opened it up, finding it unlocked.

Not a great sign. It was probably raided like everywhere else, but it was worth checking out. This security center was just as trashed as the last one, although one of the gun lockers was unopened. She moved quickly through the room, repeating her search. She managed to snag three more magazines for her pistol, and a map of the immediate area. The first important piece of information that came was that she had apparently come to the dormitories complex. There probably wasn't going to be anything seriously worthwhile here, not in terms of weapons or information or crucial supplies, and probably not in terms of survivors.

This place felt dead.

"So, I'm just going to get the fuck out of here," she whispered as she stared at the map, her face bathed in the glow of the terminal. From what she could tell, the path through the dorm's structure should be pretty easy. There was a big, central hallway that let out from the ingress and cut straight through the technician's block, and led right to another platform that should take her deeper into Typhon Station.

Perfect.

That was, provided everything went the way it was supposed to. She supposed walking down a hallway should be easy enough, but if there was one hard and fast rule she'd learned in life, it was that things almost never went the way they were supposed to. Something always had to fuck up. With this cheery thought in mind, Kyra did one more sweep of the security room and then left. As she came back into the ingress lobby, a strange sound came to her and made her tense up. She looked around, quickly sweeping the area with her gaze, but her senses told her whatever the sound was, it wasn't actually in the room with her.

It sounded more far-off, like it was echoing to her from a vent. She waited, and there it was again. It was...almost like a clicking sound. Only that wasn't right. As she kept listening, she realized it wasn't clicking, more of…

Kyra sighed. It was too lost in the echo. Whatever it was, it freaked her out. She did not like the sound in the slightest and it wasn't something she felt she could safely ignore. Could she ignore fucking _anything_ in this place? She moved on, gun at ready, and came to the main exit. She hit the access button and the doors slid open. An antechamber of chrome and threadbare carpeting waited for her, the walls stamped liberally with the UAC logo. God, how she hated seeing that logo. And it was only getting worse, her hatred of the company becoming more powerful and pervasive the longer she was on Typhon Station.

Ignoring the closed doors to her left and right, Kyra pressed on, opening the next door dead ahead of her.

A lengthy corridor awaited her, with a pair of zombies moaning and groaning as they meandered around. She raised her pistol and sighted the first one, then popped off a shot. Clean kill. It went down without a problem. This garnered the attention of the second shambling horror, which began to turn around. Kyra put it down just as quickly. She waited to see if anyone, or anything, would come running at the sound of the dual shots, but she remained alone for now. A dozen doors lined the walls on either side of her, almost all of them closed.

She moved passed them, pausing and peering into those that were open to make sure there were no surprises for her. She only found one more zombie lurking in the shadows of someone's apartment. It apparently had hearing problems, and she killed it without a problem. As she watched the third corpse drop, she wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she had adapted so fast to putting down zombies like this. Obviously it was a good thing, but she had always been uncomfortable with how comfortable she was with killing.

Well, at least she didn't really need to feel bad about killing zombies.

She took a moment to pat them down, hunting for more supplies, but found nothing. As she resumed moving down the hall, she began to see a problem. About halfway down the hall, there was another wall with a closed door. And something was wrong with the door. Coming closer to it, she quickly realized what she was seeing.

This door had been welded shut.

"Well...shit," she muttered, staring at the dark, singed outline. She considered the situation for a moment, then started hunting for a vent grate. It had served her well in the previous building. Unfortunately, as she went hunting down the hallway and even into a few of the rooms, she quickly discovered that whoever had designed this building was an asshole. None of the vents were even close to big enough for her to crawl into.

"Double shit," she whispered as this realization fully sank in.

So...time to do it the hard way, then. Kyra paused and recalled the map in her mind, visualizing it and figuring out the best route. If she backtracked to that antechamber, she could break left or right through another section of dorms, which would ultimately take her to a mess hall. And from _there_ she should have access to the next tram.

Should be easy…

Kyra jumped as she heard that sound again, that weird clicking noise. It was closer this time, or at least clearer, though still coming to her through the vent system. It was...oddly organic. Definitely nothing that was coming from a machine or piece of equipment. Unless the UAC had been creating some _really_ out there shit. She kept listening, trying to garner a bit more meaning from it, but the sound died away.

Sighing, and frustrated with how keyed-up she apparently was, Kyra made her way back to the antechamber. It remained clear, though she thought she could hear a zombie roaming around somewhere nearby. She considered her options for a moment, then broke to the left and opened the door there. Another, though shorter, corridor awaited her. It was also clear, but...Kyra raised her pistol, holding it firmly with both hands.

Something was wrong.

She didn't know what, only that her instincts were baring their teeth again in response to some kind of threat. She checked the area: there were a few doors in the walls around her, but they were all closed. The corridor terminated in an L turn about twenty feet away, breaking to the right. She moved slowly down it, edging towards the turn. She hit it and pressed her back to the wall, waiting, listening for some clue.

Nothing. Dead silence enveloped her.

Almost as if the whole base was holding its breath.

She swallowed and peered slowly out around the corner. And she saw...nothing. Just another brightly lit length of corridor, with UAC logo-stamped walls and mostly closed doors. There were a few corpses in their own pools of blood stretched along the length of the hallway, and bullet holes tattooed the walls, but she was still alone.

Except she couldn't shake the feeling that she wasn't.

Something lurked. Something was waiting for her.

Kyra began moving slowly down the passageway, gun still at ready. Something was wrong, something was different. Or was it? Was she just being paranoid? Was she-

That sound came to her again, and this time, it was very close. Not coming to her from a vent, but actually in the area. She froze, her whole body going rigid, ice dropping into her gut like a mini-nuke and blasting out through her veins, freezing her blood. It wasn't clicking, she realized, but gurgling. Some kind of creepy, strange gurgling noise that sounded a little like an upset stomach. That was when she heard a footfall.

It was heavy, and coming from ahead of her.

One of the doors along the left side of the corridor was open. Even as she stared at it, a shadow fell out of it, on the floor ahead of it. Another footstep, and another. How big was this zombie? And then it stepped out into the corridor.

And Kyra's world seemed to drop out from beneath her.

She was _not_ looking at a zombie.

She was looking at…

What? _What!?_

A monster? An alien? A...a demon? It looked like some kind of demon. It was a good six and a half feet tall, and covered in a leathery, red-brown skin. It looked pretty well built. It was humanoid, except that its bald head was kind of big and bulbous. Painful looking, ivory-white spikes jutted up out of its tough skin, all over its body.

The thing stepped slowly out of the doorway. There was something very worrying about that. It clearly saw her, it had locked eyes with her. Kyra realized that the only reason she hadn't unloaded on it was because she couldn't be sure if she was looking at animal...or a sentient being. Once it had stepped fully into the hallway, it faced her fully and stared at her. She kept looking between its mouth, which was full of sharp teeth, to its hands, which sported claws made of the same ivory-like material. Definitely dangerous.

Was this an alien?

Was this first contact?

Kyra felt like she'd been dropped out the back of a troop transport without a chute or warning. She couldn't just mindlessly mow down this thing. A thousand thoughts crashed through her head. Was it some kind of experiment gone wrong? If it was an alien and this was first contact, was all this a misunderstanding? How in the hell did this thing fit in with the zombies? Was it some kind of side effect? Exposure to some sickness that came from them? Intentional? It was still staring at her with bright, feverish red eyes.

"What are you?" Kyra asked.

It was the only thing that she could think of, and she felt the need to say _something_ , even if she was pretty sure it couldn't understand her.

The thing adopted a huge grin and Kyra suddenly felt so threatened that it was like someone had pointed a gun at her. She raised her sidearm. As she did this, the red-brown creature pulled its hand back like it was winding up to pitch a baseball and then snapped its arm forward. The lighting changed and Kyra threw herself to the side, uncertain of what had happened. She opened fire. The first two shots went wide and the thing repeated the action.

As she lined up her third shot, she saw it, but couldn't believe it.

It _threw fire at her_.

An actual, honest-to-God ball of fire began coming right for her as she squeezed the trigger. The bullet punched right into its big head and sprayed the wall behind it with deep red gore. She sidestepped the fireball, narrowly avoiding it.

For several seconds, she stood there, breathing heavily, trembling, eyes wide.

"What the _fuck!?_ " she screamed. "What the fuck is this!?"

Silence mocked her.

Slowly, she moved forward, keeping the awful corpse covered with her pistol. It wasn't breathing or moving at all, but she didn't trust it. In that moment, she didn't trust the floor not to fall out from beneath her. Kyra came to stand within arm's length of it, staring hard at the creature. What in the fuck was she looking at?

What _was_ this?

Kyra straightened up suddenly and began walking, pistol out again, ready for combat. This was a bad place to try and process...whatever the hell had just happened. She began jogging down the corridor, faster than was safe, tossing glances into any open doors she passed by. She caught sight of a few shambling figures, shrouded in shadows, but ignored them. Her brain was running hard, feeling like it was slamming in her skull the same way her heart was thundering in her chest. The door at the end of the passageway was open, and she could see a collection of tables and chairs scattered across the room beyond.

Perfect, the mess. All she had to do was get through it and then-

Something shrieked to her right as she stepped into the room and she felt an explosion of pain on her right bicep. Kyra screamed in response and jerked to the side, twisting to face her attacker. Another one! She saw that it had shreds of her suit on its claws. Leveling her pistol at the creature, she punched six holes in its broad, well-muscled chest, feeling fury pumping through her veins as she also felt blood pumping out of her body, trickling down her arm. The pain was fiery and powerful, but her rage was overriding it.

She punched two more rounds into the thing's face, turning one eye into a gory crater and tearing away a portion of its ugly skull. She dropped it, then heard another warning sound from her left. Spinning, she dropped to a crouch, narrowly avoiding another fireball. She felt the heat of it through her suit as it scorched past and emptied the magazine into a second red-brown monster. Its deep red blood sprayed across a random proliferation of utensils, plates, and cups on the table behind it. It shrieked again and threw another fireball before she put the final shot left in her sidearm into its big, gaping maw and it went down.

Reacting automatically, Kyra dodged the fireball, ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in. She stood there for a few seconds, trembling with adrenaline, waiting to see what else might come for her. A pulse of intense, burning pain cut through her awareness and she hissed, realizing that she was still bleeding. Gritting her teeth, knowing she had to get somewhere safe before she could properly deal with this, she slapped her hand over her wound, sending a fresh pulse of intense agony through her, and began making for the far exit.

She managed to hit the door and slip through it into another antechamber without running into anymore trouble, though she could hear that awful gurgling sound somewhere else in the building. She had to get somewhere safe. Kyra moved quickly over to the left and slipped through the door there, finding herself in another ingress lobby. More blood was splashed liberally across the bullet hole-riddled walls, and a few more corpses lay scattered across the floor. Ignoring them, she left the room and came onto another tram platform.

Two trams waited for her, one to either side. One led to Utilities & Power, the other led to the Military HQ.

The choice was obvious.

She hurried into the tram to the right, cleared it quickly, then settled into the cockpit and set it going towards, hopefully, some answers.

Or at least some bigger guns.


	52. EPISODE 02: Military HQ

For a little while, she didn't think.

Kyra simply sat there in the conductor's chamber at the front of the tram, staring out of the windows into the glass-and-steel tunnel ahead of her as she slowly trundled along the tracks. Something brought her back to reality bit by bit, something repetitive and familiar. Metal tinking on metal. Something being jostled ever so slightly by the simple motions of the tram cart. She realized that she had seen something on the way in, something important, something that demanded her attention. With a soft sigh, Kyra came back to herself.

She couldn't keep indulging in these shell-shocked moments.

And that brought her back to the reality that she was still holding her hand over her arm. As soon as she realized it, the pain spiked and she growled in frustration. Fucking stupid. She hadn't been paying attention. After this many years of being a Marine, after this much combat, she would've thought that paying attention would be ingrained into her by now. But apparently not. Apparently facing alien demonic horrors was throwing off her game. Who knew? She pulled her hand away and looked at the shredded remains of her environmental suit sleeve. She was going to have to fix that. And the gashes in her skin.

Well, she had some time.

Sighing quietly, Kyra tracked down an emergency medical kit that came with the tram and cracked it open. The most she could do was a patch-job. She bit back a scream as she dumped a combo of antiseptics and numbing agents into the wound, then let out a long sigh as the numbing agents went to work. She slapped a bandage over the wound that sealed it tightly and would do for now. Then, after a moment's consideration, she grabbed a universal antibiotic/antiviral dose and injected herself. Fuck knew what kind of bacteria that thing had been carrying. Was it an alien? She didn't want to think about that, not yet.

Kyra then hunted down a suit repair kit and took a moment to slap a second patch over her bicep, sealing the wound in her suit. She was going to have to get some real armor soon. She was holding out hope that there would be some in the Military HQ. Now that her arm and suit was taken care of, Kyra stood up and moved back into the main cabin. She had to see what was bugging her. She'd seen _something_ on the way in.

And that something was at the back of the tram, almost tucked away into a corner.

Kyra moved across the tram slowly, partially out of a newfound abundance of caution, but also out of worry that she might roll this corpse over and see a familiar face. They were facing away from her, wearing an environmental suit like her. As she crouched down, she saw a lot of blood. Pistol in hand, she grabbed body's shoulder and rolled it over.

"Aw shit," she whispered. "Erikson."

He was a PFC onboard her ship, a rifleman. He'd gotten rotated in at the same time she had, and was anxious because this was his first spacebound assignment. She remembered looking over his service record. He'd seen a few firefights, and, from what she'd gathered from the psych notes, he was out here because he'd basically lost his nerve in the last one. He'd been protecting a city under siege by rebels over in Greece, since they were currently allied with the US and Norway, which was where he was originally from, and the US was trying to keep Greece from falling after its economy had tanked for the tenth time this century.

Staring at his pale face, as white as a corpse left in the snow for three days, she felt a powerful sense of empathy and regret. They'd stuffed him out here because they figured he wouldn't see any combat.

Hell, someone probably thought they were doing him a kindness.

And they probably would've been...if this hadn't happened.

Judging from the ugly wound in his stomach, which had basically been ripped out, one of those red-brown bastards had gutted him. The poor kid had died, alone and in pain, on some distant fucking moon.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Then she saw that he was laying on something, something that glinted, and finished rolling him over. Well...at least the situation wasn't a total waste. Kyra grabbed the shotgun he'd died with and bled all over, then reached into one of her pockets and pulled out an antiseptic wipe. She slowly went about wiping the gun off, her movements methodical, and she temporarily lost herself in the motions. She wouldn't be able to get all the blood off, but by the time she was finished, it was close enough for rock and roll.

She checked it out, found it empty.

Well, great.

She patted Erikson down, checking all his pockets, and managed to scrape together enough shotgun shells to at least bring it back up to full. After sliding the shells in one by one, Kyra stood back up. She lingered for a moment, looking down at Erikson. How many more were dead? Was she alone here? She remembered seeing the distant firefight. It was around the building she was going to...or she thought so. That seemed like a long time ago now. Well, if they were here, she would find them. There was bound to be a LifeScan in the Military HQ, and hopefully that could give her a reading on just how alone she was here.

The tram was finishing its trek.

Kyra slipped back into the driver's seat and went through the annoyingly slow process of bringing the tram through the airlock. She scoped out the loading platform as the tram finished locking into place. No zombies, no...whatever they were. She needed a name for them. Even as she was thinking it, a word came to her from somewhere in the abyssal depths of her brain: fiend. They looked like fiendish little bastards. Well, big bastards, given they were taller than she was. And they all looked alike. Well, roughly alike, she hadn't exactly had time for examining the finer details. What did that mean? _Were_ they demons?

Kyra had never really bought into any of the religious stuff that still held a strange kind of sway over the world, but she was at least familiar with it. Something about these creatures made her think of demonic entities. They couldn't be. Hell wasn't a real place. Were they aliens? If they were aliens, then first contact was officially blown. Well, she had been tired of fighting her fellow human for all these years…

She had to admit that fighting zombies and aliens was a big step up.

There was often moral ambiguity to war. There didn't seem to be much ambiguity to gunning down freaking zombies and demonic aliens. Unless she was missing something huge. With how absolutely insane this situation was, she thought that it wasn't impossible that she was actively hallucinating or in a coma right now. But, there was also a good chance that this was real, so she should keep going on as such.

She stepped out onto the platform and checked it over. No zombies, no fiends. Good start. She searched the area, pointing her flashlight into all the shadowy niches, finding nothing but a few corpses with no ammo in their pockets, the bastards. She left the platform and came to a small checkpoint that had obviously seen some heavy fighting. The opposite door was broken and half-open, which was good for her, given that she wouldn't have another way to get it open if it was locked. She ducked through it, shotgun at ready.

Kyra came into a bloodied, flickering antechamber.

"Oh shit," she muttered.

Here was a roadblock...probably. Dead ahead of her and to her right were two large doors that were not only closed, but ringed by red lights: a lockdown. The antechamber was clear at least. Kyra scoped the area out as she moved towards the main door. The way she wanted, needed, to go: Command Control. The answers would be there.

Once she got to the keypad, Kyra extracted the cracked, bloodied PDA that had once belonged to Staff Sergeant Burns. She swiped it, waited...and heaved a sigh when the pad buzzed angrily at her. She tried it again out of frustration, but received the same result. Annoyance settling in, Kyra turned and marched over to a security center that was tucked away into one corner. At least it wasn't locked down. Kyra performed a quick search of the center, but it was pretty damned ransacked. No armor, no ammo, nothing of use.

"Give me _something_ to work with," she muttered as she settled in at the main console and go t to work. It was, at least, intact.

Burns's PDA clearance got her into the system and the power or the servers or whatever must be better over here, because there was a bit more to access and the load times were shorter. She didn't go hunting for intel, not yet. She doubted anything relevant was kept anywhere but Command Control. Instead, she checked into the lockdown and studied a map of the Military Headquarters. And resisted the urge to shout a curse.

It was definitely a full-blown lockdown.

This was going to require more than a bit of hacking or tracking down a PDA to get past. Kyra studied the situation a bit longer and managed to piece together what exactly it was she was going to have to do, which was basically track down three keycards. The first one was in the Barracks, which was the only way that wasn't locked down. That card would let her into the actual headquarters part of Military HQ, which was where she would be able to find the next card that would grant her access to the final portion of the base, which held the _other_ keycard that would finally fucking get her into Command Control itself.

What a great fucking day.

Kyra left the security center and moved over to the barracks entryway. She hit the access button and prepared herself for whatever might lay beyond. Another, smaller antechamber with three doors leading away from it, two of them open. Even as she was peering through the one dead ahead of her, she saw two, now unfortunately familiar maddened red eyes staring out at her from a nearly pitch black interior.

She aimed and fired, lighting up the barracks beyond and blowing the head clean off of the fiend that was waiting for her. All around her, a cacophonous roar went up.

"Shit," she muttered, backing up.

They sounded like mostly zombies, so Kyra backed up, out of the door she'd come in through, and switched to her pistol. No sense in wasting shells on zombies. As she kept backing up, a gunshot sounded and she jerked in surprise. The first zombie, a man in ripped fatigues, stumbled out, wielding a pistol.

And pointing it at her.

"Fuck me," she muttered, aiming and firing, putting a round scorching through his right eye and turning it into a geyser of dark red gore.

She'd forgotten they could do that.

The next two after him also wore torn, bloodied military uniforms, but weren't armed, and they went down without a problem. Then something let out an awful hiss-shriek and a ball of fire flew out at her. Kyra ducked it and backed up a few more steps, preparing. A fiend came out of the opening, shrieked at her and threw another fireball. This one came dangerously close to hitting her and she could feel the heat of its passing even through her suit. She fired, putting three rounds into its big, gaping mouth.

The back of its head opened up like ripe fruit dumped from three stories up.

Even as it dropped, two more zombies appeared. Kyra put them down, her shoulders squared, her aim steady.

In the end, she ended up emptying her magazine, slapping in a fresh one and popping off two more shots before the tide of monstrous bastards ceased. She waited, then began moving forward again. When nothing leaped out at her, she kept going. Checking out her options, Kyra chose to ignore the almost totally dark barracks for now, given that she had another, actually lit barracks and a bathroom to investigate.

She moved slowly, carefully. At this point, she really didn't think the zombies were capable of much more than coming right at her, maybe wielding a gun, which was surely dangerous, but nothing she couldn't handle. The fiends on the other hand...she had no idea how intelligent they might be. They could do something like lie in wait, set a trap, or something else. Were they animals or intelligent beings? She thought the answer was somewhere in the middle. As she began picking through the wrecked remains of the first barracks, Kyra felt her hope slip a notch. At first, she couldn't really put her finger on why.

But as she looked across bloodied and ripped mattresses, bullet-riddled corpses in pools of their own blood, and the general state of the place, which looked as though a tornado had been through, she slowly realized what was bothering her. How many times had she seen a room like this? Barracks were pretty much universally mil-spec now, apparently even out here in outer space on a UAC base. If you had been in one, you'd been in them all. Even with all the blood and death around, she could catch a faint whiff of the antiseptic spray they mopped and buffed the floors with. It was like...home. This place was powerfully nostalgic and provided a sense of warmth and comfort, like an eye in the middle of the painful, never-ending hurricane that was life.

And to see it in such a state of disarray, filled with the dead, with her own kind…

It was powerfully disillusioning.

Kyra pushed through that mounting despair. She had to. It was easy to give in to despair and misery and hopelessness. Sometimes she thought dying was easy, it was living that was hard. And right now, she needed to live, even if only to see what in the fuck had happened here. But there might be survivors, people she could help, and she would help them if she could. Kyra finished her search of the first barracks, finding just a few more shotgun shells and another magazine for her pistol, then commenced the search of the bathroom.

It was just as void of the keycard as the barracks.

Fighting fear, which quickly replaced the despair, Kyra found herself soon standing in front of the entrance to the dark room. She holstered her pistol and grabbed the shotgun, bringing it back into play and snapping on the barrel-mounted flashlight. A shaft of titanium white light cut into the abyssal gloom, revealing more racked rows of ruined bedding. She played the light across the interior, checking to see if anything was alive within. She couldn't see anything. That didn't necessarily mean the area was clear.

Then her light stopped suddenly as something blue glinted.

"There you are, you little bastard," she whispered.

The blue keycard was at the back of the room, in between two rows of beds, in a pool of blood. Well, now or never. Kyra moved forward through the barracks, keeping a wary eye out to either side of her. Just get in, grab the thing, and get out.

She got to the blue keycard and knelt to grab it.

Something growled. Kyra cursed and took a step back. The growl had come from _above_. She brought her shotgun up and pounded out a shot at the same time she saw a fiend coming down at her from a hole in the ceiling tiles.

The blast took it in the gut and eviscerated a good chunk of it in a spray of pulpy gore. It shrieked and landed atop her. They both went crashing to the floor and she let out a shout of pain. It was still alive, she realized as it grabbed her helmet, shrieking in her face. The thing had to weigh several hundred pounds. It was pretty much raw muscle. Knowing she had to get it off of her, and right now, Kyra put all of her strength into one powerful shove and rolled over to the right, dumping the half-dead thing over onto the floor.

She rolled away from it, trying to put some distance between the two of them, but it was already scrabbling towards her, shrieking madly. Kyra yanked her pistol from its holster, rolled back over to face it, shoved the business end into its big mouth and squeezed the trigger twice. _That_ stopped the ugly bastard from moving.

"Son of a bitch," she whispered as she picked herself slowly up off the floor. She groaned, feeling various aches and pains assaulting her now, and took a moment to pop her neck. Then she holstered her pistol, snagged her shotgun, and grabbed the blue keycard.

So, the bastards could set traps.

Either that, or it was luck of the draw for the fiend.

She wasn't sure what to believe as she pocketed the blue keycard and then hurried out. She came back into the main antechamber and marched quickly over to the next door on her list: the one that would take her into the headquarters portion of the military base. Kyra took a deep breath, let it out slowly as she came to stand before the large, red-ringed door. Staring up, she couldn't help but think _red ring of death_.

She shook her head and raised the lockdown, swiping the blue keycard.

The red lights flashed, then were replaced by a green light, then they went out. Kyra pocketed the card. She hit the access button and leveled the shotgun at the opening aperture. A long, stainless steel hallway, smeared with blood, awaited her. Before she could take a step into that corridor, she heard a deep snort, like a pig…

Except not a pig, bigger than a pig.

Her mind's eye filled with the vision of a huge boar with enormous, gore-streaked tusks. She shivered and focused. Boars always creeped her out for some reason. Kyra waited, then took a step into the corridor. Something snapped wetly, then she heard an awful sound: eating. Something was chowing down. Something big.

Not a zombie, she couldn't imagine a human being making that noise, even zombified. And the fiends...no, they didn't make noises like that. Or at least she didn't think so. She could be making assumptions, which was dangerous, but her gut told her she was hearing something altogether new. What was it? Did she want to know? The awful feeding sounds only intensified. They were coming from an open doorway to her left. She could hear deep, wet breathing, then another snap. She realized it was a bone snapping.

Kyra swallowed and got right up against the wall. She waited, hyping herself up, then stepped around and into the doorway.

And saw something completely new.

"What in the fuck?" she whispered in open horror.

What looked like a shaved, pink gorilla with bright, golden, glowing eyes and a mouth stuffed with huge teeth and smeared with blood awaited her. It was in the middle of a bathroom, in front of a row of stalls, presiding over a pile of body parts. The big thing looked at her with a feverish intensity, and something about its gaze made her think of an animal more than anything else. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't particularly bright.

That made it no less dangerous.

The thing issued a low grunt and suddenly began coming towards her. Its feet stomped through the bodies, splashing blood and snapping bones, and she screamed and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun shell hit it right in the head and ripped away a chunk of its skull. The thing let out a full-blown roar this time and came at her faster, charging now, too stupid to realize it should be dead. Kyra threw herself out of the way, diving to the left and landing hard on her side. She rolled over, aimed the shotgun again and then pounded out another slug shell as soon as the big bastard came into view. The shell took it in the chest.

The big pink thing turned to face her, readjusting its trajectory.

Kyra's eyes widened and she pumped the shotgun, then blasted out another shell.

 _That_ one went into its huge, gaping maw. And that slowed it down. She fired again, and this time the back of its head burst in a spray of dark red gore. That dropped it. Breathing shakily, Kyra got back to her feet and studied the hulking beast she'd killed. It had to be a good six feet and a solid five hundred pounds. It looked like it was made of pure muscle. Only unlike the fiend, which looked like he was a nut about working out, this bastard looked like he was a steroid freak and pumped iron twenty four seven.

"What are you?" she whispered, studying it.

What did _this_ have to do with zombies and fiends?

What was going on here?

The light had faded from its eyes. Kyra studied the creature with an analytical eye. It was clearly strong, and it had a good reach and looked like it could bench press a car. Its big, giant head was hunched forward and had a giant mouth with huge teeth, so that was an obvious threat. It had white horns sprouting from its head on either side, like a bull. They weren't too long, but it was possible that it could gore her on one of those if the circumstances were right. It didn't seem capable of producing any kind of projectiles, like the fiend, so basically she just had to keep these bastards at a good distance and put them down fast.

Okay, fair enough.

But what to call them?

She'd named the fiends, and zombies were obvious, and naming it might help her cope with it, because this was starting to freak her out.

It was pink.

Well, not bright pink, more like burnt pink, like scar tissue, but definitely pink.

"Pinky," she muttered. "You're a pinky. Big ugly bastard."

She kicked it in frustration and moved into the bathroom, then began searching it. Every time a fresh puzzle piece fell into her lap, it seemed to change the fundamental shape of the puzzle, so that she no longer had any idea what she was looking at. As she finished up her search of the bathroom and found nothing, Kyra suddenly began looking around for a vent grate. Suddenly, the idea of crawling through the vents didn't seem so bad.

Unfortunately, the vents of that first building seemed like a fluke. She couldn't get in, the grate was way too small. Trying to put aside her frustration, Kyra left the bathroom and moved back out into the main corridor. She moved slowly, listening for any further threats, as she approached the next door. Opening it up, she saw that it led to a training area. The place was a wreck. Well, time to get to work. Kyra began searching the area.

The next half hour seemed to pass with a torturous lethargy.

She search the training room, a gym, an armory (that one was particularly painful, as obviously the local forces had cleared the place out), and a main security center. And all she managed to find for her troubles were a handful of zombies and fiends, about enough ammo for her pistol and shotgun to replace what she used killing the inhuman beasts, and another keycard. At the end of it all, she ended up standing before the final locked door feeling like she'd played a zero sum game. Well...at least she had the card.

Using her yellow keycard, Kyra opened the next door blocking her path to answers. It opened up to reveal another corridor. This one ended in a pair of door-doubles that led to an elevator. Her ticket into Command Control. And it was locked, too. Just one more keycard, and it rested somewhere in the immediate area. Well, it had better, because she didn't know where else it might be. Of course, it was possible that it may lay beyond the locked door...then she was fucked. As she began hunting through more derelict, wrecked rooms, her minded wandered.

What had _happened_ here?

Zombies, she could make some kind of sense of. And the fiends...there were fewer ways to make sense of that, but it still could go together. Some kind of alien invasion and they turned humans into zombies either on purpose or maybe as a side effect of...wherever they were from. But the pinkies? What in the hell were they doing here? She had no idea how _they_ fit into the equation. Then again, she was just assuming that there were more than one. What if it was just a one-time thing? An experiment gone wrong?

A freak of nature?

But even as she thought this, she came into an office and found another pinky corpse slumped on the floor in a huge pool of blood, most of its skull blown off, its brain exposed. What brain it had, anyway.

She cleared out the offices, a bathroom, and finally located the final keycard she was looking for at the back of a storage room, clipped to the belt of a dead Marine. Key in hand, she finished securing the area, then finally came to stand before the elevator doors. Time for some answers. Hopefully. And maybe an upgraded arsenal, although she was beginning to lose any real hope for that. This whole base seemed like it had been cleared right out. The elevator came down into its metal nest and the doors opened up, revealing a sparking, bloodied interior. Well, it was otherwise empty, at least. Kyra stepped aboard and rode it up.

The elevator clicked into place and the doors slid open.

Kyra stood there for a few moments, staring out at Command Control.

Something about seeing this high-tech, million-credit control room shredded and destroyed, smeared with blood and littered with spent shell casings, presiding over a base filled with death, seemed to resound deep within her. Something about it made this situation real in a way it hadn't been to her since she'd first woke up in that escape pod. The elevator dinged and the doors began closing. Kyra snapped back and stepped out, blocking them. She looked around, taking in the smashed consoles, the cracked screens, the dead bodies.

There were a good dozen or so Marines and technicians scattered across the circular room. There were windows along the peripheral of the room, just above the ring of workstations and terminals and consoles along the walls. It gave her a view out onto the immense desolation that surrounded her. She ignored it and instead began taking the opportunity to pat down the bodies. She managed to snag a few more magazines for her pistol and another shell, and nothing else. Frustration mounting yet again, she settled in at the most intact terminal and got to work, trying to hunt down some kind of information or clues as to what had happened.

Twenty more minutes passed, each one pissing her off more than the last.

At the end of it, she came very close to smashing her fist through the screen. Instead, she just took a deep breath, let it out, stood, and marched back to the elevator. The internal database was shot. There were so many holes in the network that she couldn't find even basic reports. The LifeScan was broken beyond repair. The communications were broken beyond repair. So basically, this whole building had been a complete waste of time.

She rode the lift down and then moved towards the tram station on the other side of the Military HQ. She had two buildings left to check out: Research and Utilities. Since she doubted that the utilities building held anything worthwhile, she planned to head onto the research structure.

Hopefully it would have at least _some_ kind of answers for her.

But her hope was beginning to wear thin.


	53. EPISODE 02: Something Like Hope

Kyra's tram was almost to the point in the glass-and-steel tunnel where it forked, right path leading to Research, left to Utilities.

That was when it happened.

That was when her radio chattered to life in a haze of static.

She was nearly napping in the driver's seat, waves of lethargy crashing relentlessly on the shores of her fortitude. The trams had a false sense of security to them. She knew the tram was clear at least, or as clear as she could be certain, but there were so many crazy-ass things happening that she no longer took even the most basic things for granted.

" _...God's sake, is anyone picking up this fucking transmission!?"_

Kyra jerked awake at the sound, her heart spiking painfully in her chest as she automatically activated her radio.

She recognized the voice. "Garret?!"

" _Kyra?! Oh thank fucking God, I thought you were dead! Where are you? Uh...over."_ She had never heard someone sound so relieved before, and she felt about as relieved as he sounded just then. Finally, another person!

"I'm in a tram heading to Research, where are you? Over."

" _We're in the Utilities building. Over."_

Kyra looked up ahead and saw that she just had time to make the adjustment. Fingers flying across the control pad, she readjusted the tram's course, setting it to break left and pushing its speed even faster. "We? Over."

" _Yeah! Uh, I'm here with Ross and Banks, and a scientist who survived this mess. We're on the move right now, pretty deep in. Over."_

"I'm coming right now. Do you know where any of the others are? Over."

" _Some of them. I saw Whitley die. Lance Corporal White and Private Finch are dead too. White got swarmed by those zombie fuckers and one of the big pig demons took Finch's fucking head off. I haven't seen any of the others. Over."_

Kyra sighed heavily. "Reed, Meyers, Peters, and Erikson are all KIA. Over."

" _Jesus fuck,"_ Garret whispered, his voice heavy with anger and fear. _"We could really use your help, Staff Sergeant. I think-"_

He cut off suddenly as something roared and machine gun fire came onto the airwaves. Someone screamed, a voice she didn't recognize, maybe the scientist, and then it all went to nothing. "Garret? Garret?! _Talk to me!_ " she snapped.

But there was nothing.

She kept trying to raise them until she hit the airlock of the Utilities building, then gave up. She had to find them. The tram finished its gutwrenchingly slow crawl through the airlock and settled into place at a platform of dark metal. Kyra stepped out through the doors as soon as they were open, shotgun in hand. A lone zombie was moving around the platform, and something about it made her hesitate.

It wasn't wandering.

It almost looked like it was...patrolling.

She shouldered her shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The slug shell rocketed from its dark metal nest and blew the awful thing's head off its shoulders, cleanly knocking whatever parody of life still lingered in its decaying frame out of it. She swept the corners and niches of the area, noting the more utilitarian nature of the building, and then made for the far door. She hit the access button. A red light flared and it buzzed angrily at her.

Kyra tried it once more and got similar results.

She ground her teeth together in mounting frustration as she stared at the unresponsive thing, resisting the urge to just shoot it. All at once, inspiration struck. Or rather memory. She looked around and up, quickly spying a ventilation grate. This one was big enough for her to fit into. For whatever reason that these were designed that way, unlike some of the other buildings, she took the opportunity presented to her and hurried over to it. Working fast, Kyra shoved a nearby silver crate, stamped with the ugly UAC logo of course, beneath the grate and clambered up on top of it.

Slapping the access button, the grate slid open and she hauled herself inside, scrambling to get into the confined space. She was alone, she surmised, and began a quick crawl. All she had to do was find her way to a security station or even just a terminal. Maybe she could jack into a local comms network and boost her signal, or maybe even get access to some localized LifeScan. Fucking anything would be useful right now.

It was tough to move fast in the vents, and made a lot of noise, but it was tougher still to force herself to slow down and take it easy. The first ventilation grate she came to was stuck closed, clearly damaged in all the fighting. It looked over a bloody but vacant entrance lobby with the traditional security checkpoint waiting for her. She considered bashing her way through, but then just pressed on. It took another twenty meters before she found her next opening. And it was here that Kyra bore witness to a new atrocity.

At first, she felt another spike of hope as she spied a new figure moving hesitantly through a large room, beset on either side by huge metal cylinders. She almost called out to them, but something made her stop. The zombie she'd seen on the docking platform. She had the suspicion that they were somehow getting smarter, or at least able to mimic some form of intelligence. She resolved to study the unknown figured for a bit longer. They were wearing a Space Marine uniform and armor, but she couldn't see their face.

They seemed scared.

Kyra had just decided to call out, as they were close to leaving the room, when it happened. A bright red-orange light flared into being from one corner of the room. Her immediate thought was: _Fiend._ But something was wrong about the light, about the way it was moving. And then she saw what the problem was. Except there was no way she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. Kyra stared in befuddled horror as the survivor let out a cry of pure fear and twisted around, raising a pistol and popping off several shots that went wild.

It was a skull.

A goddamned flying skull, that was on fire.

What was she seeing?!

The flying skull let out a shriek that sent a chill down her spine and made a beeline for the survivor, who was screaming now, firing more shots, backing up. Whoever it was, they tripped, and the skull dive-bombed them. Kyra expected it to bounce off or maybe even take a bite out of them, but that wasn't what happened at all. The skull _disappeared_. It flew _inside_ of them, as easily as a diver cutting the surface of the water.

There was a scant two seconds of silence.

And then the screaming recommenced, only it was louder now. It sounded like someone was getting their fucking arm sawed off with a chainsaw. They began thrashing around on the metal plate flooring violently, as though caught in the throes of a seizure. It was awful to watch, but she had to keep looking, had to study, to figure out what it was she was seeing, because some part of her, some deep, primal, gut instinct told her that this was important. This was _crucial_. So Kyra made herself watch, her whole body rigid, every muscle screaming.

Abruptly, the person froze up, holding the pose for a few seconds, then they slowly began to get back to their feet.

A groan sounded.

Kyra's stomach instantly froze up and her heart began to pound even faster. No. That wasn't...she had just seen a fucking zombie transformation. _This_ was how people were turning into zombies!? That didn't even make any sense! How?! How was a fucking flying, flaming skull turning people into goddamned zombies?!

Then again, what the hell did make sense anymore?

She had to see this. The zombie was still moving sluggishly, groaning occasionally as it stumbled around, and it hadn't retrieved the pistol it had dropped in the transformation process. Now or never. Kyra hit the access button and the vent grate slid open. She dropped down as smoothly as she could, landing with a grunt on the floor, then rose up to a shooter's stance and aimed her pistol. The zombie heard her and turned.

Right as she pulled the trigger, Kyra saw the face of the person who had been transformed into an inhuman beast.

It was Private Mora.

The bullet she fired went right into his left eye socket, turning it into a geyser of dark gore. Mora's head snapped back and he went slack, hitting the floor with a hard thump. She waited, trembling from terror and adrenaline, to see if anything else would show up. Nothing came running or flying or scrabbling at the sound of her gunshot. Slowly, Kyra crept forward, intent on learning as much as she could from this latest atrocity.

She crouched by Mora's corpse and studied him slowly, carefully. This was definitely Private Juan Mora, the easygoing Mexican Marine who was always good for a laugh, was an excellent shot, and seemed to get along with damn near everyone he met. And now he was dead. He'd survived the crash and zombies and however many battles he'd endured on this hellhole, only to be turned into a zombie, then put down by his own Staff Sergeant.

"I'm sorry," Kyra whispered as she began rifling through his pockets. He didn't have much, just a few magazines of ammo and a pair of shotgun shells. Kyra took a moment to look around for the pistol he dropped earlier, but she couldn't see it anywhere, and couldn't muster the resolve to perform a thorough search for it.

Flying skulls?

Flying, on fire skulls turned people into zombies?

That was ludicrous. That was insane. That was like bugfuck, crock-of-shit, burned out hack sci-fi writer crazy.

Except it was real. It had objectively happened before her very eyes. And the _ease_ with which it had happened...God, that suddenly made those flying skulls the most dangerous thing on this moon. At least so far. Kyra straightened up and looked around. She'd come to what had to be the water treatment facility. So where were the others? Kyra looked the way she'd come. Into the vents again? It was tempting in a sad kind of way, because right then she felt like hiding from the universe, but...but what if one of those flying skulls got in there with her?

Even as she thought it, as she was staring at the dark opening, a flicker of red-orange light appeared inside the vent. It quickly grew brighter, and suddenly a flying skull hovered into view. It froze, then twisted around and stared at her with empty, flaming sockets. Opening its mouth, it issued an awful shriek and began jetting for her. Kyra let out a scream of fear and surprise. She raised her shotgun and pounded out a shell almost without thinking. The slug shell hit the skull dead center and detonated it into a rain of bleached bone fragments, its flames extinguishing instantly. Okay...so they could be killed, and pretty easily too.

But…

"I am _not_ going back in those fucking vents," Kyra whispered to herself. Not anymore, not with those things on the loose.

Instead, she began making her way through the water treatment area. It took a few painfully long minutes to hunt down an exit, shift through an antechamber, put down a pair of fiends and a lumbering zombie, and come into the next section of the Utilities building: oxygen processing. It was collection of simple rooms stuffed with tanks and controls and other pieces of equipment she didn't care to identify. All she wanted was one thing, and she finally found it near the end of the processing center. A security center.

It wasn't very large, and it had been emptied out by those who came before her, but it had exactly what she needed.

A goddamned map of the building.

She studied it quickly as she began trying to get back in touch with the others again. She saw some storage areas, what looked like a small section begrudgingly allocated to the staff that maintained this place in the form of a bathroom, a break room, and a small emergency infirmary, but the biggest section left was the reactor bay. Where the power came from. Were they there? Or in the storage section? Were they still alive?

The radio suddenly crackled to life. _"Kyra! Can you hear me?! Over!"_

"Yes, Garret! I hear you! Where are you? What's happening? Over," she replied immediately.

" _We're in the reactor section! We're getting swarmed by a fucking army of these fire-throwing bastards! You've got to back us up! Over!"_

"I'm on my way. Where in the reactor area are you? Over," she asked, seeing that it was a decently sized area.

" _I don't know...just follow the gunshots! Fuck!"_

The radio cut out again. She snapped out a curse, finished memorizing the quickest route there and sprinted out of the security center. She had to get to them. Kyra didn't realize until that very moment just how much being alone in this situation was affecting her. She wanted, no, _needed_ to be among the other survivors, among the living. She'd been knee-deep in the dead for far too long. Kyra passed through another antechamber as she left the oxygen plant and broke right, hurrying through a large metal door that led to the reactor bay.

It was more like a maze than a bay, she knew.

But even the complex layout of the map she'd studied just a few moments ago didn't prepare her for the dark, low-ceilinged corridors or the broad, equipment-stuffed rooms. Kyra stood at the beginning of a long passageway that bisected the reactor area, waiting, listening. Distantly, she heard gunfire, and roars, and someone screaming. She took off, boots banging hollowly on the deckplates as she sprinted away, towards the survivors, into the maw of madness. She checked each door with a quick glanced as she passed it.

Most of them were closed, mercifully sealed off, but a few were open. Occasionally she would see a zombie milling about, and she ignored them for now. Kyra reached the end of the corridor and waited, listening again, trying to get her breath back. _There_. Left door was partially open, spitting sparks occasionally, and it led to another corridor where she heard another round of gunfire, someone rattling through a whole mag from an assault rifle. God, what she wouldn't give for one of those. Kyra bolted through the opening.

And nearly into the waiting, bulky, muscular arms of a pinky.

It roared as it made a swipe at her and she screamed in terror and anger as she raised her shotgun, stuck the barrel practically into the thing's mouth and squeezed the trigger. The back of its dark pink head opened up and sprayed _another_ pinky behind it with a wave of dark red, pulpy gore. This just seemed to enrage the thing further and it began tearing at the now dead pinky to get to her. Kyra took another step back and repeated the action, with similar results. Two pinkies down, but then she caught sight of that awful, familiar red-orange glow.

A flying skull was coming at her from down the corridor.

No, more than that. She counted four of the awful things, and could see the bulky shapes of more pinkies beyond them lumbering towards her. Shit. Double shit. Kyra aimed and fired, pounding out three more shells, and popped three of the skulls, peppering the hallway with bits of bleached white bone. She missed the fourth one, felt her stomach turn to ice, and dropped on instinct. The skull screeched as it flew overhead and she heard it strike the partially open door behind her, rebounding off of it.

So they couldn't fly through other objects?

She twisted around violently, her back popping painfully, sighted the monstrous thing and blew it straight back to hell. More shouting now, and a lot more gunfire. And she could hear some of it over the radio, could hear Garret calling for help. On the verge of panic, Kyra emptied her shotgun at the trio of pinkies that were stomping toward her. She tore a portion of one's skull away, including one of its bony white horns, and then put it down with a shot right between its glowing golden eyes. Then her shotgun was dry.

She let it hang and pulled out her pistol, steadying her hands.

Had to do this right or she was going to end up as chow. She took aim and squeezed the trigger, trying to filter everything else out. She was no good to the others dead. The first shot hit one of the big bastards in its neck, doing apparently very little damage. The second took it in the mouth. That just pissed it off even more. The third shot, however, punched through its eye and _that_ took it down. The thing uttered a strangled roar and fell into the other pinky, which apparently took great offense to this and began viciously tearing into its now dead brethren. Kyra took the opportunity to switch back to her shotgun, shove some more shells in and pump three quick shots into it, bringing the big bastard down once and for all.

Then she was off and sprinting, feeding more shells into her shotgun.

The gunfire was dying off. She didn't hear anyone screaming.

"Garret!? Can you hear me?!" she called, either trying to reach him through the radio or just by proximity.

No answer.

By the time she'd reached the end of the passageway, the gunfire had fallen completely silent. Kyra burst through the doors at the end and came into a large room packed with all sorts of equipment and monitoring centers and workstations.

And bloodshed. And death.

"No..." she moaned, her gaze immediately falling on a corpse clad in military fatigues. There was just one fiend still moving around, and she blew its head off almost without thinking about it. "Come on, someone talk to me," she begged as she moved forward, looking among the dead. There had to be close to two dozen fiends and zombies here.

The corpse she found was Ross. A young, pale Marine who'd been trying so damned hard to prove herself, eager to jump on any task given when they were back aboard the _Icarus_ , no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. She was covered in bullet wounds and scorch marks, and a shot had taken her in the forehead. Blood was leaking steadily from the lethal entry wound. Kyra found Banks just a few feet away, his skull caved in from a killing blow. The dark-skinned medic had been sullen, but very serious and able, always researching, always learning. Kyra had learned that he planned to try and get a job back on Earth in a prestigious hospital once his contract with the UAC expired. And now here he was, just another corpse on a forsaken moon.

And then she found Garret.

Corporal Evan Garret, his throat ripped out, his skin marred with a dozen wounds. The man she'd had an extended affair with. Garret, who muttered to himself in his sleep. Garret, who liked to massage her shoulders when they were in the shower together. He'd been good to her, good for her, she had slowly come to realize over the days and weeks. A safe, simple fling of fun that had now ended in bloody violence.

Kyra heard a groan.

She slowly, almost reluctantly, tore her gaze from Corporal Garret and settled it on a white-and-red labcoat that she realized was wrapped around a wounded man.

One of the scientists, a native to the wrecked UAC facility.

She felt a wave of anger come over her. They had done this. Whatever _this_ was, she was positive they had some hand in it. Kyra marched over to the scientist and studied him as he swum in and out of consciousness. He looked about how she expected: pale, pasty, scrawny, his face red and irritated from over-shaving, his dark blonde hair greasy and twisted.

The man opened his eyes.

"Who..." he whispered, then coughed wetly, blood flying from his mouth.

"I'm Staff Sergeant Morgan with the Space Marines," she said flatly, "and you are going to tell me what in the fuck you were doing here."

The man laughed bitterly. "Doctor Henderson, at your service," he whispered, then coughed again and groaned.

"Don't you dare die on me. Not yet. Tell me what you've done here."

"What we've done? We tore a hole in reality itself," he murmured. "Research. We were researching teleportation technology, Staff Sergeant. Quite successfully, I might add. But we opened the door. The door we never, ever should have opened in a million, billion years. Because _they_ were waiting on the other side. Do you understand? You've seen them. The demons. They can conjure fire and eat men alive, can turn us into mindless slaves."

"You stupid fucking morons," she whispered. "They're from another dimension? And you let them in?!"

"Yes. It was not intentional. We thought the dimension they're from was abandoned at first. Long abandoned. But then they came..." he devolved into a coughing fit again. She knew that he was very near death.

"How do I get off of this rock? There's no ships left and comms are fragged."

"Research," he replied. "Get to Research. The portal is still there, still active. You must pass through it. You _must_ get to Io." Here he seemed to try to draw strength, his expression growing more stern, more serious. He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a bloodied and battered PDA. "Take this, you'll need it. There is research on Io, on Obsidian Station. You _must_ get to it, protect it, get it to the military. It will help in the war against the demons. But you aren't going to like how you get to Io. You're going to have to go through hell to get there..."

Henderson drew in another breath, opened his mouth to say more, exhaled, and then abruptly ceased moving. He didn't inhale again. His eyes lost their focus. He slumped to the deckplates, blood still slowly leaking out of him.

"Shit," Kyra muttered. A maelstrom of emotions was surging and swelling inside of her, but as she stood up and looked around at the death and destruction that surrounded her, her eyes locked onto something.

An assault rifle.

A DX-41 Taskmaster assault rifle, came with a thirty round mag of 5.56mm bullets, optional silencer, laser scope, single, triple, or full auto…

The information settled over her brain like a comforting blanket, and she felt some of her control return as she knelt and retrieved the abandoned rifle. Slowly, she began to check the corpses for more ammo and supplies.

She had to get to Research.


	54. EPISODE 02: Hard Fought

Kyra felt an intense wave of dread settle over her, nearly crushing in its enormity, as the tram settled into place. The airlock hummed and hissed, faintly audible beyond the glass-and-steel of the tram cart. She swallowed and tried to push the fear back down, running her hand down the barrel of the assault rifle she'd snagged. She wasn't sure what it was. The fact that she now felt confident that she was alone here, on this wretched place? Maybe. Garret, White, Banks...everyone from the _Icarus_ was very likely dead.

And she was the last one standing.

Last _human_ standing, that was. The airlock finished its cycle. The large doors in front of her opened up, revealing a sleeker, and bigger, receiving bay. This one looked more like it was meant to handle human cargo rather than the regular kind, and had the look of the place where all the money had gone. The lighting was better, anyway, although several of the bulbs were flickering. There was no reception committee waiting for her at least. Kyra kept sitting there in the driver's chamber even after the tram had settled into place and a maddeningly polite voice had informed her that she could depart whenever she liked.

She didn't want to leave the tram.

She didn't want to go into Research.

Kyra liked to think that she was brave. She wasn't fearless. Only morons were truly fearless, or people who honestly didn't care whether they lived or died. But she had spent a long time conquering her fear, dealing with it in its many forms. But this was something different. It was that same, pervasive feeling that had been with her, settled over her like an icy fog, from the moment she woke up on this godforsaken rock. It was at its most powerful here, in Research. She supposed the real problem was that she couldn't stop thinking about Henderson's last words.

" _You're going to have to go through hell to get there..."_

There was something just...wrong with what he had said. No, the _way_ he had said it. Kyra could be a stickler about certain things: reading body language, reading between the lines, picking up on certain tones, the way people emphasized certain words.

Going through hell a phrase people tended to use, and phrases were said a certain way. But Henderson hadn't been just using a phrase. He wasn't just telling her that she was going to have to endure a lot of suffering and hardship to get to her next destination. From the tone of his voice, the emphasis he'd placed on certain words…

It was like he was, as a matter of fact, telling her that she would have to actually go through _Hell_ to get to where she needed to go.

As in, physically make a journey through Hell.

But what did that _mean_? Surely he couldn't be literally saying that. It was impossible. She'd looked through the dead man's PDA on the tram ride here, but most of it had been scrambled or erased in some kind of malfunction. Was Henderson cracking at the end? Lying maybe? But it didn't _feel_ like a lie, nor did it seem like he was losing his mind. For the most part. Kyra wanted to keep sitting here in this tram, keep poking and prodding this conundrum she found herself in, because it was safe. Well, safer than leaving.

Probably.

Okay, it _appeared_ to be safer than leaving the tram.

But none of that mattered. The only way Kyra was ever going to get back to anything approaching normal ever again was to keep going. Even if 'normal' was days away. Weeks. Months. Somehow, someway, she intended to get off this rock, get back to Earth. Right now, even the hellscape of a bloody battlefield in some third world, wartorn country seemed like a vacation compared to this. She'd take prison over this.

And so, finally, Kyra checked over her small arsenal one more time. Pistol. Shotgun. Taskmaster assault rifle. All in working order, all locked, loaded, and ready to kill. She pocketed the PDA, checked over her armor once more, then forced herself to walk back to the doors that would let her out. She stood before them, staring out onto the platform. Still nothing out there. Taking a deep breath and letting it out in a long sigh, she hit the access button and raised the assault rifle. It was time to do this. Time to take the next steps.

She made her way out onto the platform. This one didn't have black metal grating for a floor. It had real carpet, and the walls weren't riddled with the exposed guts of circuitry and motherboards, or access points to tucked away maintenance holes or little storage areas. No, this looked like an actual reception area.

Only the effect was lost by the death and destruction that had taken place here. There was blood, an excessive amount. The walls and terminals had been chewed by gunfire, what looked like a full-on assault of pistols and shotguns and rifles, maybe even a chaingun in there. And something had exploded in here at some point, one corner covered in soot and ash. At least security was taken more seriously here. There was a little kiosk in one corner. She checked it out, finding a handful of shells and another magazine for her rifle.

For once, she was feeling fully stocked. Her pockets bulged with shells and magazines. Like everywhere else, the workstation inside the security checkpoint had been gutted and butchered. She left it and wasted a few moments checking out the other doors in the area. One led to a storage room, two led to bathrooms. All empty. Kyra eventually found herself standing before the main entryway into the Research building.

It was now or never.

She had to walk into ground zero.

Kyra got the door that led into the next section open. She walked in with the assault rifle in hand, set to three-round burst, ready to go.

"All right fuckers, let's rock and rock," she growled.

Typhon Station accommodated her. She took in the room she'd come into with sweep of her gaze. It was good sized, with three more security centers, one to either side of her, tucked away into the corners, and a third in the exact middle of the room, almost like an info kiosk. Except in this case it was a kiosk that could kill you. There were big, sealed doors, bigger than bank vault doors, further in to either side of her, and from around the central kiosk she could make out a third door that was bigger than those two.

That had to be where she wanted to go.

There were a good dozen zombies milling around, and most of these had actual weapons. Two held shotguns and four more held pistols. Just what she needed. Kyra got things started off by popping one of the ugly fucker's heads with a three-round burst that split it in two. Old blood and brain matter sprayed on the air as the body dropped and the shotgun fell from its hands, hitting the floor and discharging, taking out the kneecap of another one.

A general roar went up as the other zombie bastards became aware of her presence. Fine by her. Kyra adjusted her aim, squeezed the trigger. Adjusted her aim, squeezed the trigger. Zombie heads snapped back in sprays of coagulated blood and skull fragments and brain matter, and they all crashed to the floor like puppets with their strings cut. Two of them returned fire on her. The first missed by a mile but the other came close. Too close. She took two steps forward, stuck the barrel of the rifle into its mouth and blew the back of its head open in fresh spray of pulpy gore. She planted her boot against its chest and sent its rotten corpse flying backwards into two others. They staggered, stumbled, hit the floor.

And stayed there when she put them down like the filthy freaks they were.

Breathing a bit faster now, Kyra quickly scoured the area for more bullets after ejecting the spent magazine and slapping a fresh one in. The zombies were ill-equipped. No surprise there. The security kiosks were emptied out. No surprises there, either. Nothing but bullet-scarred and blood splattered walls, and corpses, and broken screens. But the central kiosk still had a working terminal, and she fired it up and got in with Staff Sergeant's Burns's cracked PDA. Still not much in the scrambled databases, but there was enough left to give her what she wanted.

The way ahead, sure enough, led to Delta Lab.

That was the secret core of Typhon Station. The dark heart.

But it was locked down tight, and the only way to get it unlocked was to get into the hearts of the other two labs and hit the releases. Of course. Nothing was ever easy. But Kyra was in a mood to kill. To eliminate. To end. The first lab, to the right, Alpha Lab, was the way to go. Fine. She left the kiosk and jogged over to the big vault-like door, then punched the open button after unlocking it with the PDA. The door began a slow rise into the ceiling and Kyra stood before it, rifle in hand, ready to go. As the door finished raising up, she found herself staring at a small army of zombies and fiends. Perfect. She flipped the rifle to full auto, shouldered it, and began opening up on the bastards. She emptied the magazine, hosing them down, and listened to them scream.

The gun clicked empty at some point.

Without thinking, going on autopilot, she replaced the mag and emptied it, too. When that one was rattled clean through, there wasn't a single thing left standing in the broad, open area beyond the entryway. Kyra laughed and slapped another magazine in. Fiends and zombies littered the deckplates, awash in a pool of blood. It felt pretty good. These sick fucks had built up quite the tab, tearing ass through this place, killing everyone here, killing all her friends and comrades in arms. She fully intended to collect on that tab in blood.

Call it asshole tax.

Kyra strode through the big room, taking it all in. Most of the stuff she couldn't or didn't bother figuring out. A bunch of workstations, big pieces of equipment, glass chambers. But in the next room, she saw something that did register, and interested her greatly: a shooting range. She recognized that. What in the hell were they building over in Alpha Labs? Kyra paused in her hunt for that unlock switch and instead began looking around for whatever gun they were building here, because obviously this was no military area.

But she knew that the UAC was supposed to be cooking up some new guns for the United Marine Corps, part of their big contract. Maybe something good could come out of all this insane research. She hunted among the corpses of over a dozen maimed, dismembered, and bullet-riddled scientists, their white labcoats smeared red with blood, ripped and torn and burned. A few fiends were thrown in there as well, and even a pinky corpse in the corner. She finally found what she was looking for sealed away in a glass cylinder.

"What the fuck is this?" she whispered.

It was a gun, but the barrel was some kind of weird brightly polished accordion of metal, topped by a black square tip with a big bore. The handle was big and bulky, the whole thing was, actually. But what _was_ it?

Well, only one way to find out.

Burns's PDA didn't break the seal, but Henderson's did.

The top half of the glass case rose up with a soft hiss. She let her rifle hang by its shoulder strap as she reached slowly into the case and laid her hands on the gun. She pulled it free of its mount and studied it.

There, stenciled on the side of the weapon, in tiny white lettering:

 _UAC-1_

" _PLASMA RIFLE"_

 _Experimental_

 _Iteration 3.1_

"Plasma Rifle," she muttered. "Well, sure, why not?"

Kyra hefted the rifle. It was lighter than she thought it would be, but still pretty solid and sturdy. She spent a moment checking it over, trying to figure out if there was anything she should worry about. The safety was in the right place at least. She turned it off, twisted her lips in consideration, then finally turned and aimed the gun at a nearby fiend corpse. She gave the trigger a quick squeeze. The gun made a quick humming sound and a burst of blue-white light flashed into being as a ball of blue-white energy shot out and hit the corpse.

It burned a decent hole into the thing's back and left a nice scorch mark.

"Wow," she whispered. She was tempted to do it again, but who knew how much ammo this thing had, or how stable it was? Best to use it under more desperate circumstances, cause that made sense. Did anything on this fucking moon make sense? Although it didn't come with a shoulder strap, it had attachments for one, and after a bit of searching, she managed to find a discarded (and empty) shotgun that had one, so she make the necessary adjustments, then let the plasma rifle hang from her shoulder, keeping the assault rifle at the ready.

After checking over the rest of the lab to make sure she didn't miss anything else that might be particularly useful in her goal of escaping this place and murdering everything that wasn't human, (and maybe a few humans, if she ran into the monsters that let this happen), she found the release and punched it. The console turned green and offered up a happy chime, indicating that half the stupid lockdown on Delta Lab was raised. About facing, she marched back into the main room and undid the lock on Beta Lab.

As soon as the door slid open, Kyra felt a wave of absolute frozen dread roll through her. Definitely something wrong here. Something about the long corridor of austere white tiling that set her on edge. It probably didn't help that there was a lot of blood smeared on the walls. It reminded her of a hospital or infirmary, and those were never good in her mind. Nonetheless, she pressed on, slowly traversing the length white-tiled tunnel. There were several doors placed at mathematically precise intervals to either side of her.

Most of these were closed, and they all had windows.

She peered in the first one and knew very suddenly why she hated this place. Beyond the window was a room. The periphery of the room was lined with all manner of medical instrumentation and equipment, and all of it seemed to be in orbit around the central piece: a stainless steel table affixed to the white-tile floor. There were straps on that table, sturdy ones. Her heart began to beat harder, thumping low and dreadful in her chest, as she checked out a few other doors. Finally, she saw one of those tables was occupied.

By a human.

She swallowed. That was…

No.

From the way the face was deformed, the skin pallid and ugly, she could tell that it was a zombie. But...something was wrong. If they had a zombie strapped down to the table, that would have to mean that they'd encountered one before the incident or outbreak or whatever it was had happened, because there wasn't really time for precise and taxing medical procedures while monsters were running rampant, killing everything they saw.

But how had they gotten access to those skulls that turned people into zombies?

What did any of this _mean_?

Frustrated and frightened and angry, she pressed on, stopping to check each of the rooms. Occasionally she'd find a zombie roaming around, a doctor or a Space Marine that had been zombified and locked away. She fired off a single shot each time, putting them down and spraying the walls with their old blood and rotted brains. Finally, the corridor came to an end. Beyond the next door, which was an airlock and had been violently ripped open by brute force, was a larger laboratory. A handful of fiends were moving about, poking through the remains of the personnel who had been caught there. Kyra sneered as she raised her rifle, flipped to single-shot, and fired. The first shot was good, taking one of the ugly brown-red things through the temple and snapping its big, ugly, bulbous head to the side in a spray of monster gore.

The others offered up shrieks of surprise and fury as they became aware to her presence and began hurling fireballs her way. She strafed, making sure to keep up with what was in her path so she didn't trip into or over anything, and put two rounds through the chest of a second fiend. A third shot through the neck put that ugly monster down. A fireball came painfully close and she could feel the heat searing through her environmental suit. Kyra almost snarled as she squeezed off another four rounds, two missing but two connecting, one of them turning the final fiend's right eye into a pulpy geyser of dark red gore.

As it hit the deckplates, she waited, listening, ready for more. But there didn't appear to be anything else lurking in the labs. Kyra checked out her environment as she hunted for the lockdown switch. This seemed to be the place where they studied the results of all the cold, calculating, detached autopsies they committed here. Although was autopsy the right word? Wasn't that something you did to the dead?

She had come across a few more zombies, and two fiends, and although the zombies were, in her mind at least, undead, she doubted that the scientists and doctors would balk at the opportunity to conduct a real-time vivisection of a live specimen. It was places like these that truly terrified her, places were inhuman things were done by humans with an utterly detached, almost machine-like autonomy. It wasn't so much that her heart was bleeding for the zombies or the fiends, they were fuckers that deserved to die.

Well, the fiends did, the zombies were just...innocent bystanders really.

No one _asked_ to be a zombie.

It more reminded her that this kind of thing had been done to fellow humans, and not really ones that deserved it often times. How many inhuman experiments had been carried out? How much pain? How much suffering had been endured under the cold steel of medical instruments wielded by men and women who somehow brought themselves to do this. And it was the detachment that turned her stomach.

As much as she condemned it, tried to fight it...she _got_ brutally viscous violence. She understood what it was to feel the blood rage, the battle lust. She understood what it felt like to murder, to want to kill someone with your bare hands, and it wasn't even that she was a bloodthirsty person. It was more that she found herself placed in situations and in a line of work where you were far more likely to have that bad old aspect of yourself brought out again and again. It was ugly, and it was dangerous, but, much as some people didn't want to or would never admit it, it was _human_. She didn't excuse violence because of this, but she at least understood it.

This, however?

This cold, clinical, sociopathic disconnection from humanity required to sit there and slice into a living, screaming person?

 _That_ was horror.

Kyra tried to shake the bad thoughts and ugly vibes from her mind as she kept up her search. There were a few more offshoots, one hallway similar to the one she'd first come in through, another area that was home to larger actual surgical bays with observation rooms, and one room that held racks and rows of reinforced glass-and-steel cages. Some of which were still occupied by fiends or zombies, even a pinky.

Hell, in one of them a trio of flying skulls floated around, bumping into the glass every now and then. She tried not to the let the implications of this room overwhelm her as she located the released, hit it, then headed back to the main room.

So, obviously, they had known about this situation for a long time. Long enough to build a fucking specimen storage facility. Obviously Henderson hadn't been telling the whole true, but why had he bothered hiding this fact? He made it sound like they'd accidentally found the other dimension, then gotten overrun by the demons. Clearly that was not the case. How long had they known? How long had they been doing their experiments?

How long before the demons got fed up or got their shit together and invaded Typhon Station? And...Obsidian Station. She thought about that as she came to Delta Lab. He'd mentioned Obsidian Station, over on Io. She was willing to bet that it was in just as bad condition as this place, but that did raise a rather serious question…

How many other facilities might be overrun?

She knew that the UAC had a number of outposts in space. There was Mars City on Mars, and the two stations up on Phobos and Deimos. There was supposed to be one out on Triton, Neptune's biggest moon. There were more, she knew, but none off the top of her head. How many of them were experimenting with this damned teleportation technology? How many were dead right now? She shook off these thoughts with some difficulty and forced herself to focus as she opened up Delta Lab. The door began to slowly rise.

She was given a view of another security checkpoint that had been utterly wrecked. As soon as she saw that the way was clear, she took a moment to check out the area, managing to get her hands on a few spare magazines for the assault rifle and pistol, then pressed on through to the area beyond. It turned out to be another antechamber, like the initial area in the Research building, doors to the left, right, and dead ahead.

The doors to either side of her were closed off, and they didn't seem to be what she wanted, at least not right away. The way ahead was pitch black, the door open, as though inviting her inside. She had to clear this place out first. Kyra flicked on her flashlight and moved slowly into the room beyond. She played the pale beam of light across the laboratory, finding a fairly large room awaiting her inspection. She got an idea of a lot of workstations and consoles built around a centerpiece that looked...somehow wrong in the wan light.

Sighing in frustration, Kyra began to look around for some kind of light switch. She listened intently for signs of life, or undeath, but heard nothing. All she could hear was her own breathing, and her heart beating in her chest. She finally located a control panel not far from the main entrance and brought it to life. After navigating the simple menu for a bit, she finally found the controls she wanted and hit the lights.

All around her, the lab came to life, brilliant white lights snapping on overhead. She cursed softly, squinting, trying to get used to the change. Turning, she surveyed the laboratory again, then froze, aiming her rifle. Something moved, beyond that big piece of equipment across the room…

She waited, swallowing. Whatever it was, it didn't seem similar to anything else she'd faced so far. It was too tall. She'd seen movement beyond the top of the console, which had to be at least seven feet tall, maybe seven and a half. Finally, a sound ripped through the air, one that instilled inside of her a tremendous frozen black fear.

Someone pulling the ripcord of a chainsaw.

It was coming from behind that console. The sound came to her again as the chainsaw failed to catch. She was breathing heavily now, sweating badly, eyes wide and unblinking in anticipatory horror. The sound came one more time and the chainsaw kicked to life with a roar. Kyra had just resolved to open fire on the console when it was suddenly and violently knocked over, and what had been hidden was now visible.

She stared in open horror and revulsion.

It was definitely different from the other beasts she'd seen so far. It had to be a good seven and a half feet tall and was cast in mottled green skin. It stared at her with wide, glowing yellow eyes and was panting, not that she could hear it over the roar of the chainsaw that was apparently growing directly out of one wrist, its right wrist to be specific, completely replacing its hand. It rippled with raw muscular power.

A word snapped into her mind as suddenly as the beast had appeared before her.

 _Sawcubus._

It felt right. The beast, the Sawcubus, let out a shriek of battle lust and came at her at a dead sprint. Kyra screamed and opened fire, hosing it down with gunfire as fast as she could, but it was fast, and those shots that were connecting didn't seem to be doing much good. And then the thing was right there in front of her and it got too late to dodge very fast. She raised her assault rifle over her head in a mindless act of self defense as it brought the chainsaw down and sparks flew as she felt an impossible force begin to press against her arms.

The rifle was cut in half.

Kyra's body reacted faster than her mind and she dropped suddenly into a crouch, then dove in between the thing's legs. It let out a scream of frustration as its chainsaw hit the deckplates and the painfully loud squealing rending sound of those two things meeting overrode everything else for a few seconds. Kyra scrambled to her feet, stumbling away, groping blindly for the plasma rifle. Had to kill this bastard very fast or she was going to be chopped into many pieces, and probably eaten for breakfast by the zombies or the fiends.

She got the plasma rifle up and into play just about the time the Sawcubus spun around to face her again. She squeezed the trigger the second she had a shot lined up and the lab lit up with a brilliant blue-white, pulsing light. The Sawcubus howled its maddened fury as the balls of energy slammed into its flesh, charring and burning wherever it touched. The thing lost its footing for just a second, then leaped to the side. Kyra cursed, trying to follow it, spraying the area with wild plasma fire. This fucker was _fast_.

She managed to catch it a few more times before it picked up and threw an entire shelf at her. Kyra dodge-rolled out of the way, barely avoiding getting crushed by the metal shelving, and then the Sawcubus was upon her again. She rolled away from it, then got the rifle up once more and squeezed the trigger. This time she had the bastard dead to rights. It stumbled, then stumbled again as its body took the full brunt of the assault.

But it wouldn't go down.

The plasma rifle began to beep rapidly and she felt it getting too hot too fast, but she had to put this thing down. She kept the trigger pulled down, hitting the Sawcubus over and over again with overlapping waves of plasma fire. Its mottled green flesh blacked all across it and abruptly it fell to one knee, then crashed to the metal floor. And then the sound of the chainsaw running died away, as did its pained, enraged shrieks.

The only sound now was the rapid beeping of the plasma rifle, which had become a steady tone now. Kyra surged to her feet and then threw the thing away as hard as she could, back out the way she'd come, into the antechamber.

The rifle exploded in a brilliant blue-white flash right before it hit the floor.

Kyra waited for the sound to die away, drawing her shotgun, and looked around, to see if anything _else_ was going to come running. But she seemed to be alone. Kyra let out a long, long sigh of relief, then began walking slowly back into the antechamber, which was now partially covered in char from the explosion. She checked out the first room she'd initially passed, what was basically a glorified break area with a lounge, bathroom, and galley. She wondered how anyone could relax in a place like this.

Finding it empty, she moved on to the second area, which was the one she really wanted. It was a kind of secondary command and control center. She spent half an hour going through whatever logs she could find, whatever data had survived the chaos of the outbreak. She didn't find much really, just a bit more evidence that they had been conducting research on the creatures from the other realm at least for a month or longer. Probably a lot longer than that. She also learned that comms were indeed totally fragged, as she'd initially surmised.

But what she really wanted was access to the LifeScan.

And she got it. This time, it wasn't broken. It worked exactly as intended. She set it to maximum range, which would scan for ten miles, and let it run, hunting for survivors or any signs of life. She wondered if the zombies or the monsters would show up. Finally, the computer chimed to her that it had finished, and she wasn't sure how to feel about what it showed her.

 **ONE LIFE SIGN DETECTED.**

In a way, it was kind of comforting. Now she knew. It was unlikely anyone was outside of the ten mile radius and still alive. She was the sole survivor of the _Icarus_. And now the sole survivor of Typhon Station.

With that morbid bit of curiosity satisfied, Kyra returned to the primary lab, the teleportation chamber, the dark core of Delta Lab, of the station itself really. And now she took a good look at the thing in the middle of the room. She didn't want to, but she made herself. It was a very odd device, and the whole room was built around it. It was essentially three metallic rings, one inside of another, and a third inside of that one, each smaller than the last. It was a very strange design of shiny silver metal, built onto a complex looking platform. Kyra moved slowly up to it. The thing thrummed with dormant power.

This must be the teleportation device.

"So how do I work you?" she muttered, looking it over.

She sat down at a nearby workstation and began hunting. It took twenty minutes of searching both the local database and Henderson's PDA, but finally she had the activation procedure. It was surprisingly simple. But that was how technology worked: you made insanely intricate and complex things easy to utilize.

Finally, she had an interface on the screen that showed her two black circles against a white background. The one on the left, in pristine white text in the center of the circle, was labeled: _Typhon Station_. The other was labeled _Obsidian Station_. Kyra suddenly wondered if it could link to anywhere else, but put the thought aside. For now, she just wanted out of here, and Obsidian Station was the next step on that particular journey.

She activated the gate.

A low hum immediately began to fill the air. The rings started to move, to spin slowly. Kyra raised her shotgun and backed away, an instinctive reaction to danger. The hum continued to grow and it seemed to rattle her bones. The rings spun faster. Darkness began to creep out from the core of the gateway and Kyra seriously began to wonder if she'd made a mistake. Was it fucking _supposed_ to do this!? If it was, how had _anyone_ continued working on this project?! One look at this thing should've tipped off like...everyone that this thing was fucking evil. Like, straight up evil. Kyra realized that something was flickering at the core of the rings, which were spinning quite quickly now, turning into an almost silver blur.

She couldn't figure out what it was she was looking at...some kind of energy. Only it looked like no energy she had ever seen before. It looked like no _thing_ she had ever seen before. It hurt her eyes to look at it, but she couldn't look away. It was growing in intensity, pulsing madly, filling the whole area with flickering black light.

When the intensity reached a climax, there was a powerful pulse, and Kyra had to look away. When she looked back, she saw that the rings were now locked back into place, and within them...a seething mass of darkness.

She shook her head in wonder. "Seriously," she whispered, "who in the fuck looked at this and thought, 'Yeah! That looks like a great idea! Let's send someone in there!'?! Who!?" she demanded of the desolate, bloody station around her.

Only the pulsing, seething blackness was her answer.

Kyra sighed and moved over to the screen again. Both circles were now gently pulsing, shrinking and swelling in sync with each other. Did that mean they were connected? Probably. Well...this was probably about as good as the situation was going to get. It was time to get a move on. Kyra stepped up onto the metal platform and stared into the darkness.

Fuck, she did _not_ want to do this.

But she had to. Typhon Station was a dead end.

The only way forward was through.

Kyra stepped into the blackness.


	55. EPISODE 02: Hell Unleashed

The world fell away from her.

A void of pure, abyssal obsidian didn't so much consume her vision as it did engulf her very essence. She thought there would be pain, but there was just cold, a sapping, draining cold that seemed to suck the very life from her. Cold was its own kind of pain. She was tumbling, flipping, twisting through a negative space.

Kyra would have screamed, but she was paralyzed.

Things chattered around her. Things she could not see. They muttered and screamed and bellowed and panted and spoke in a language that felt like icy black spiders crawling across her brain to hear. Kyra Morgan didn't know how long she flew through that inky, midnight abyss, only that at some point, some small quantum of mercy was delivered to her, and she lost consciousness.

* * *

Something groaned.

What might have been a few seconds or a few minutes, or even a few hours, passed.

It groaned again.

Kyra slowly came to realize that she was the one making that noise. Then it occurred to her that she was still alive enough to make a noise. That got her to open her eyes. A roiling crimson sky awaited her, and she screamed when she saw it. Or she tried to, anyway. Her throat was painfully dry. Coughing, she jerked and tried to get to her feet. Wherever she was lying, it was hard and painful and cold. Her body was stiff and unresponsive, protesting the request for action. She ignored the vague pain and the numbness, letting her frustration (and fear) fuel her body. Kyra sat up and tore her eyes away from that endless bloody sky.

She surveyed the place she found herself in.

Unless she missed her mark...this was _clearly_ not Obsidian Station.

She was on a peninsula of dark, pockmarked rock. Ahead of her and to either side…

An ocean of bubbling, boiling, noxious green liquid. It reeked like toxic waste. And there were other reeks too, she realized, buried in that stench: blood, shit, piss, sweat, decay, death. And...sulfur. Sulfur like…

Brimstone.

As in fire and brimstone, as in burning skies, as in…

"Hell," she whispered. Henderson's words came back to her in a rush: _You're going to have to go through Hell to get there_ and she felt her control slip. Trembling, breathing heavily, she turned slowly around, praying that this plot of land she initially took for a peninsula was not, in fact, an island, leaving her stranded in a sea of toxic sludge. No, she realized as she turned around, it wasn't quite that bad.

Though it almost was.

The land spread out and pressed onward ahead of her. A lot more dark, mottled rock that was cut through in some places by rivers of more of the bubbling, toxic sludge. In the distance, to the right, most of the view was taken up by jagged black mountains. A red mist curled around their peaks. To the left, the landscape dropped away at a shallow grade. There were strange rock formations dotting the land, big, misshapen boulders that looked like they were covered in red or blue glowing veins. And she saw stands of dead trees, too, with barbed branches that thrust up through the rock. Further on, she saw what might have been a swamp.

And there were more mountains in the far distances, always more mountains.

She could see structures, as well. Huge stone structures of bizarre design.

What held her attention, however, were two things. The first was one such structure, dead ahead of her, maybe half a football field's length of distance away. It was made of blocky, pale green, almost gray stone bricks. It looked a little like an old fortress or a castle from medieval days. It didn't seem particularly large. There were rusted iron bars serving as windows and what might have been torches were stuck to the walls, burning with a malignant green light. Krya stood there staring at it for a long time.

Then realization began to dawn on her and she looked down at herself.

She was naked.

That seemed to finally jar her out of the stupefied, shell-shocked state she now fully realized that she was in. Her first thought was: _Well, there goes those fucking PDAs and all my ammo._ Her second notion was to mutter "Fuck me."

She laughed suddenly. God, wouldn't that be nice? What she wouldn't give for a good, hard fuck right now, with a killer orgasm. A long, hot bath afterwards…

Kyra laughed again, louder this time, and couldn't seem to stop. She fell to her knees, gasping for breath as she kept laughing, shaking all over.

Suddenly her laughter was cut violently short as she hunched and puked. An ugly spray of bile and intestinal fluids splashed the dark rock beneath her and she moaned miserably, dry-heaving a few more times, then spitting repeatedly, trying to clear the taste from her mouth. She shivered violently, then forced herself to stand up again.

Was this what cracking up, flipping out, and losing your fucking mind felt like?

"I need clothes," she whispered, and her mind latched onto that. "And a weapon." Her lack of firepower made her feel more naked than her actual nudity. But it was cold here, and that was going to become a real problem fast.

Seeing as it seemed like her only real option, Kyra set off towards the stone structure, rubbing her biceps rapidly, trying to get some warmth. Could this situation possibly be any worse? What had _happened_? Obviously the portal had not functioned as it was supposed to. She was...where _was_ she? That other dimension, she remembered slowly. The alternate realm that the UAC had discovered, this place of blood and terror. Of evil. And this place was evil. Kyra thought she had seen evil before, and she had, but this…

This was different. This was just…

She didn't really have words for the way this place felt, or how it made her feel. She kept walking, suddenly glad for how numb her feet felt, because she could feel only the distant pain of the rocky, barren, sometimes jagged ground pushing into her bare feet. Alone, stranded in Hell, naked in every way that counted…

Could this _possibly_ be any worse?

Well, she could be paralyzed or sick, she supposed. Or maimed. She could be surrounded by monsters. Had she been fighting demons? Like... _real_ demons? As she looked around again, Kyra could immediately understand why Henderson had said what he'd said. But had he known, she wondered suddenly. The fucker must've known! He had to have known that the gateway wouldn't work properly. Bastard…

But, wait. "Hold on a minute," she whispered, then turned back around. Besides being depressed with how little ground she'd covered so far, Kyra looked back at the peninsula she had awoken on, and a question presented itself: how in the unholy fuck had she gotten there? There was no receiving gateway there. There was, she realized as she looked harder, a spot that was darker than the rock around it. Some kind of energy discharge? So what had happened? Maybe...the wormhole or matter stream or what _ever_ form of sci-fi bullshit method of travel the gateways used had malfunctioned and spit her out somewhere in this dimension.

Like jumping out of a plane and landing wherever you fell, instead of the plane landing like it was supposed to at an airport.

But why had it stripped her of _everything_?

She sighed, shook her head gently, then turned and resumed her journey.

As she kept walking, Kyra realized that she'd missed something up ahead. A shape, low to the ground. A corpse? She hurried up, trying to coax her body to go faster, but at this point it felt like she was walking on stilts, more guiding her body than controlling it. She made it to the corpse and discovered that it was a fiend. The fiend had been shot full of holes. Bullet holes. What did that mean? She grew excited, then felt it fade some. Zombies, she thought. Zombies had guns. Then again, they were pisspoor shots, in her experience at least, so maybe not. The corpse looked old, several days old, so maybe someone had come through here?

She searched the nearby area, finding more evidence of a skirmish. Spent shell casings. Spilled blood. Another pair of fiend corpses. She was just about ready to give up and submit to the fact that she was going to have to fight anything she came across with her bare hands when she almost tripped over something silver and shiny.

"Well," she muttered, bending and grasping a handle, then picking it up and studying it, "I think I could do worse."

It was a fire ax. More of a hatchet really, but it was very sturdy and very sharp. She made a few chopping motions with it. Her reflexes were still a bit sluggish, her body complaining and unresponsive, but it would have to do.

She walked on.

* * *

The simple act of walking to the building had at least brought her muscles back online a bit. And the hatchet felt good in her grasp. There was a large entryway into the structure, but it was closed off, a big door of that same ugly brown dead wood, and she ignored it anyway. No sense in kicking down the front door if you could find a side entrance. She could hear grunts and groans floating over the walls of the gray brick fortress.

Her old friends the zombies.

If nothing else, one of them would have clothes at least. She found the side entrance she was looking for, an empty doorway that led up a narrow, darkened stairwell. She crept to the top, as silent as she could manage, and froze when she got close, hearing something shifting, then another empty groan. Yes, zombie. Close by.

She raised the hatchet and got a little closer, then waited. A footstep. Another. Two more. Coming from the right, getting closer. A shadow fell across the entryway. Kyra waited, eyes wide, adrenaline pumping. _This_ she understood, at least. To a certain degree. Finally, the zombie came in front of the opening and before it had a chance to even recognize her presence, she brought the hatchet down with all the savage fury her abused, half-frozen body could muster, burying it in the thing's skull. As she ripped the blade out, the zombie collapsed, dying without a sound beyond its body hitting the floor. She waited, bloody hatched raised again.

Nothing.

Well, so far, so good. She moved forward and checked out the room beyond. It wasn't very large, and there was an opening off to the right that led into a larger, open-ceiling area, but the way seemed clear for now. She began patting down the zombie. He didn't have a weapon, of fucking course. She muttered angrily to herself as she checked his pockets. He'd probably been a technician in his past life, either that or he'd dressed as one after. She wondered where he'd come from, if he'd been stationed on Europa or Io.

Or somewhere else, maybe.

Somewhere, a door opened. Kyra felt her heart skip a beat and began searching more frantically. Come on, there had to be something she could use. But no, no holsters on his hips, no gun tucked down his boots or a shoulder holster or even down the back of his pants. There were footsteps now, a lot of them, too many. Getting closer.

Grunting, growling, groaning.

Zombies.

Nothing! Screaming a curse, because they obviously knew where she was, Kyra snatched up the hatchet and surged to her feet about the same time a zombie first appeared in the open archway that led deeper into the structure.

Well, at least he was a Marine, and had a uniform. Unfortunately he also had a pistol. Kyra dashed forward, intent on taking the bastard out first and fast. He aimed at her and fired. Kyra screamed again, this time in pain, as she felt the bullet wing her right shoulder, cutting a burning line of pain across her flesh, then she sidestepped and brought the blade down hard on the fucker's wrist, chopping right through it.

The gun, hand and all, hit the floor, but there was no time to grab it because now there were another half dozen bastards coming in after her, including the initial one she'd chopped. Kyra let out a battle cry of bloodlust and rage and pain and threw herself at the monstrous horde. A pure rage swept over her as she brought the hatchet down again, lopping off some zombie fuck's reaching arm up to the elbow. She brought the bloody blade around in a tight arc, completely decapitating another. Coagulated blood flew as she worked.

It felt good.

She didn't want to fully admit that to herself, but it was liberating to cut these sick bastards up. She'd done most of the murder in her life with a gun in her hand, but she'd had to do hand-to-hand and up-close-and-personal combat before. Close quarters combat. She'd broken three men's necks and stabbed a man and a woman in the throat before with her combat knife. But never like this. The way they didn't stop, their reaching, cold, grasping, clammy hands kept coming for her ceaselessly just enraged her even more.

"Just fucking _leave me alone! Fuck!_ " she shrieked, shoving another feral, pale creature back, its mouth smeared with old blood, eyes empty of any and all humanity. She buried the blade in another's skull again, ripped it out and decapitated two more.

She wasn't sure how long the killing went on for, or how many she killed, but when the blood haze finally lifted Kyra found herself gasping for breath, covered in old blood, standing among a small sea of corpses, heads, and limbs.

"Fuck," she whispered, looking around. Well, she wasn't cold anymore. As she looked around at the bodies, she groaned. Of course cutting off so many limbs would mess up the uniforms or jumpsuits they were dressed in. And now she was covered in blood. The first order of business was to grab the pistol, which she did, although she had to take a moment to pry the dead man's pallid fingers off of it. She checked the magazine and found it half dead. Well, it was a start. Kyra took a moment to determine whether or not she was really alone this time, padding slowly over to the only other exit where all the zombies had come in through, and looked out.

A strange, square chamber awaited her inspection. In the dead center was a square sunken pool filled with that same green toxic crap, bubbling and hissing and spitting. The peripheral of the room had wooden walkways. There was a door to the left and a door to the right, both of them big and wooden, although they had the strange design of being like the doors she was used to: the ones that lifted into niches in the ceiling.

Across from her she saw more square holes cut into the walls and more green torches burning beyond them. No bad guys, though, so she moved back into the original room and began searching all the corpses she'd just made. After several minutes, she managed to come up with one more magazine of ammo for the pistol and an at least semi-decently intact uniform, from the second zombie she'd killed, as it turned out to be the only Marine still properly dressed. She managed to gather up enough non-bloody scraps from the others to, with some degree of success, wipe the blood from most of her body, but she'd need a real shower at some point.

Kyra dressed quickly, so very grateful for even the basic comfort of a uniform, boots, holster, and all. As she finished lacing up the boots tightly and slipping the hatchet into a loop on the belt, she winced at the pain in her shoulder. Nothing she could do about that right now. For the moment, she needed to do some recon. She moved back out into the central room. The way to the right just ended, leaving a gap. The way to the left, however, offered stairs that led down to the door in the left side, then back up to the recessed room on the other side of the area. As she moved over there, Kyra finally got a good look at the architecture.

It didn't make sense.

The walls were that same gray-green stone brickwork, which seemed appropriate...inasmuch as anything in Hell seemed appropriate. But the doorway that she had to pass through to get in here was made of like...iron girders or something. That looked distinctly human. But it didn't seem like something that the UAC might have added, they looked old. Or maybe things aged or corroded faster here? And the floor was this weirdly boring brown wooden square paneling. Who the hell had designed this place?

There was an alcove of space on the other side of the room, and it didn't contain anything beyond some dirty brass candle-holders that burned that same malignant green color. Kyra headed back to the main room, considered the situation for a moment, then finally went up to the left door. Now, to figure out how to activate it…

There was a big silver square on the wall next to it, and a dark, smaller square within it. Kyra frowned, studied it, then finally reached out and pressed it. There was a loud click that made her jerk in surprise, and the inner square lit up red. What? So there was...electricity here? No time for that now, the door was opening.

She heard something as the door opened up...chewing. She hated the sound. Especially the wet snap of what had to be a bone. The door finished opening to reveal a trio of fiends chowing down on some human remains. Kyra sneered and raised her pistol. She put a shot right through the back of the head of the central one and it pitched forward onto the mound of meat and gristle and bone. The other two shrieked and began spinning. She popped off another two shots, one going wild but the other turning the side of the second thing's head into a bloody crater. The third and final fiend snapped off some return fire, missing her only by a few inches, and she bit back a cry of pain as it sailed right over her shot shoulder, burning in its passing.

She emptied the rest of the magazine into it, then hastily reloaded with her last magazine. After clearing the area once more, she stared unhappily at the pile of gristle and meat. There were at least a few corpses in there, and she could see the shredded remains of uniforms. There might be some useful stuff in there. Resigning herself to the miserable, disgusting task, she wasted five whole minutes searching through the pile of dead flesh and ultimately came up with nothing. Not even one extra spare bullet or a knife or anything.

Her shoulder was bugging her and her head was hurting and she was still fucking thirsty. Getting more frustrated, Kyra finished checking out the room, found nothing worthwhile, and left. Coming back to the main central area, she went up to the last remaining door and opened up it up same way as the first door. Another open-ceiling area with a toxic pool in the middle, bigger than last time, awaited her. This time, however there was another room in the middle of the pool. She moved along the peripheral walkway, checking for more doors or supplies or hostiles, but found nothing beyond the front door she'd initially passed over.

And made an unhappy discovery.

A moat of the green glop separated her from that central room. It wasn't a particularly broad moat, maybe two feet, and she could jump it. Hell, the entrance was even about five feet lower, so she'd be jumping down, too. There was nothing blocking her way. It was just...one screw-up and she'd get to go swimming in…

What _was_ that? Toxic waste? Acid?

Something that was unique to this dimension?

Whatever it was, she had absolutely no intention of touching it. Already the fumes were making her nauseous and lightheaded. She looked into the shadowy chamber beyond, but couldn't see anything save for a stairwell rising up out of sight to, presumably, a second story. It was the only way to go, unless she wanted to head back out the way she came in, or through the front door, and Kyra didn't want to leave empty handed. Well...she did have the uniform and the pistol, but still. She had to check the whole area out. Something was telling her to.

So she took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Took another, then forced herself to run across the little bit of space she had available to her. Hitting the edge, she leaped and sailed through the opening. Landing with a heavy grunt, she made it into the area beyond.

Hands as hard as steel locked onto her right arm.

Kyra shouted in surprised, jerking and twisting away, but the creature, what she realized was a goddamned fiend, had an iron grip. Working fast, she snatched the pistol from her right hand and, as the thing shrieked in rage or some kind of alien triumph, stuck the business end into its mouth and pulled the trigger twice.

That killed it, but she was jerked to the floor because it still had a death grip on her. And it saved her life. A fireball scorched by overhead, barely missing her head, as she hit the floor with a grunt of pain. Kyra snapped the pistol in that direction and wasted five shots before putting the thing down. Aiming with just her left hand was not a strength of hers. But it went down, and she was alone again. Fuck, she wanted out of this miserable place already. Kyra got up after prying the death grip of the dead fiend off and looked around the room. It was almost totally empty, just the corpses for company, more bare stonework floor and ceiling.

She moved carefully up the stairs in the dead center of the room and came to another, smaller rectangular chamber. _This_ one was more interesting, and she knew her instincts had been right. There was another door in between a pair of large, floor-to-ceiling iron-barred windows, which gave a view out onto the landscape beyond. It didn't look anymore appealing than before. On the other hand, the UAC supply crates tucked away in one corner and the dead body there were very inviting. Honestly, even the godawful UAC logo was inviting in this wretched environment. Kyra quickly patted down the body of the poor bastard, a technician in the ripped remains of some kind of biohazard armor that obviously hadn't helped in the slightest.

Should've been combat armor.

One crate was cleared out, and the second almost was too, but whoever had been through here before had either not been able to carry it all, or perhaps thought to leave behind something for some theoretical other person who might come through this area. Though it was probably that first one. This place seemed pretty out of the way. In the crate was a Stimpack. Not as good as a full medikit, but it would do the job.

There were also half a dozen magazines for the pistol.

And, to top it all off, the tech had a PDA. She fired it up and was glad to see that it was in decent condition. She set the audio logs to run as she took the time to patch herself up, dealing with the gunshot wound and a few cuts and scrapes that she'd endured so far that needed some attention. Most of the logs were generic reports about repairs the tech had made around Typhon Station, but then it changed when he'd apparently been handpicked to join a team, one of a few, that was routinely sent into this other dimension.

Kyra still didn't know if she was fully comfortable actually calling this place Hell.

That was about a month ago.

He at first seemed anxious, then excited, then that slowly petered out into anxiety again, then fear. Finally, his last log indicated that he'd been on one such expedition, where it was his job to make repairs to the equipment they had brought into this place, when his squad had been attacked. He'd gotten separated and ultimately had ended up here, and gutted, and dead. The most important facet of data, however, was a map in his PDA.

It was of the region.

After patching herself up, Kyra studied it and found her current position. The structure she was in was marked **Stone Keep A7**. So there were a lot of these, apparently. And there was apparently just a shitload of dead space around her, save for one other area, what was marked **Subterranean A3.** Well, great. Because what was better than being in Hell? Being in Hell _and_ underground! But at the end of Subterranean A3 was apparently a portal that would take her to another location, the **Dead Wood Fortress**.

And in that location was, apparently, a teleportation device that would take her to Obsidian Station. It was a very loose plan, one that relied on a lot of luck, not something that she had an exact abundance of recently, but it was a plan.

And right now, it was the only one she had.

Pocketing the PDA and the extra ammo, Kyra left the stone keep.

And pressed deeper into Hell.


	56. EPISODE 02: Perfect Hatred

Kyra Morgan marched across Hell, and felt…

She wasn't sure what she was feeling, only that it didn't seem right. She was in Hell. She should be feeling abysmal, mind-numbing, hitherto unexplored realms of blind terror. But she wasn't afraid. Okay, that wasn't true. She was pretty scared. But she wasn't panicking, she wasn't freaking out, at least not from fear anyway. Maybe from stress. Fuck, this was stressful. But more she felt...angry. And kind of curious.

Maybe it was because she didn't believe this was Hell.

It sure looked like Hell, and the things she'd been fighting could be called demons. But demons didn't die, right? Maybe in the real world, but in their own realm, on their home turf, she thought they were immortal. Demons were supposed to be fallen angels, and angels didn't die. Where would angels or demons go if they died? Would they cease to exist? That wouldn't be so bad. But she was getting off track. In Hell, you were supposed to be immortal, your immortal soul was being tortured. But she'd seen dead on both sides of the line now.

No, Kyra was far more ready to believe that the UAC had accidentally opened a door that led to an alternate reality, another dimension, and that dimension simply resembled Hell, and its occupants simply resembled demons. Sure, they looked demonic and threw fireballs, about what you'd expect, but otherwise...well, that's where the resemblance ended. Plus, that whole dying thing. If this _was_ Hell, then Kyra had to admit, she was a little disappointed. Not that she was really trying to invite yet more difficulty into her life.

But above all that, or perhaps below it, in her core, she was pissed.

Mad at the UAC, mad at life in general, and mainly mad at these fucking abominations that so gleefully slaughtered and tortured her fellow humans. She was sure there were probably some people in Typhon and Obsidian Stations that deserved death, maybe not torture...well, maybe. The money-grubbing fucks who had let this happen, who had probably pressed on regardless of the risk. The cold, calculating scientists who'd enabled it to happen. And maybe some of her fellow Space Marines. Not everyone who was a Space Marine was there because they'd questioned orders once too often, or scored too low on a test.

Some were rapists that the United Marine Corps wanted to just sweep under the rug. Some had been caught (by someone willing to hush it up) maybe doing some sick shit to the locals of whatever wartorn country they were fighting in.

Yeah, there were some pretty sick bastards that had gotten thrown out into space. Kyra would've liked to do the same, only in a more literal sense, out an airlock, without a suit on. She had no patience or stomach for rapists and would just as easily castrated them with a rusty knife as toss them out an airlock.

But there were certainly innocents, people who were just trying to earn a living. Techs or chefs or custodial personnel maintaining the stations, or, fuck, families. God, had there been kids there on Typhon Station?

She didn't want to think about that.

Just about the time she was beginning to worry that maybe she might not find this underground complex, she spied what appeared to be ruins, and hurried towards them. So far, she'd only had to content with a handful of the flying skulls, popping them to bleached bone bits with her pistol, having to kill a magazine to do it. She still had half a dozen, one in the pistol, five in her pockets, but she needed something with some real stopping power, and couldn't help but feel that she was going to run into something worse soon.

The ruins looked very old and she had no idea what must have destroyed them, only that there were just a handful of wrecked walls made of that same gray-green stonework as the previous structure. She moved slowly among the ruins, and this time found yet more evidence of a human presence. A few discarded food wrappers, an empty water bottle, some spent shell casings, a few dead fiends. She finally found what she was looking for near the center of the ruins: a hole in the ground, with stairs cut into the rock descending into torch-lit gloom.

"Great," she muttered, staring down it, wishing for a flashlight.

With nothing else to do, trying to use her anger to snuff out her fear, Kyra set off down the stairs. Her boot-clad feet echoed loud and lonely down the stairwell. For some reason the place made her think of graveyards and mausoleums. The walls started out as gray-green brick, but soon faded away into a bizarre white-black rock that looked like a mixture of obsidian and marble randomly mixed together.

The stairwell went on for a long time, lit at irregular intervals by old brass candle-holders. At least the light they were burning was orange-yellow. Thoughts came to her as she descended. Who had built this? Who maintained these candles? Who re-lit them if they went out? It was really hard to imagine a fiend studiously checking to make sure none of the candles were out. Honestly, it was hard to imagine them doing anything but shrieking and throwing fireballs, or maybe eating a corpse. There were so many _questions_ about this place.

It made such little sense.

This whole place struck her as utterly insane. Then again, so did everything since her world got completely fucked and she'd crash-landed on a moon. Finally, there was a light at the end of the long, lonely stairwell. It was fairly bright and didn't seem to be torchlight. Well, that was an...improvement? She guessed she'd rather be somewhere bright than dark. At least then she could see exactly what it was she facing.

Although what she turned out to be facing was scarier than taking on a group of pinkies. Well, maybe not _that_ scary, but pretty bad. The stairwell came to an end and opened into a huge room. The area immediately beyond the stairwell was a bit like a platform that extended ahead for maybe another ten feet before stopping abruptly. Kyra took everything she saw in as she slowly, carefully moved onto that platform.

It was made of gritty but basically flat, dark gray rock. To either side of her, boxing her in, were walls made of wood and rusted iron girders, and the ceiling above her was wooden as well. The platform was overlooking a drop of about twenty feet, a drop that led straight into another big pool of that bubbling green toxic sludge. And further on, there were islands. Well, more like pillars, rising up out of the sludge. Pillars of old metal placed at seemingly random intervals, at different heights, and sometimes connected by flat metal blocks that also rose up out of the toxic waste, meant to serve, presumably, as walkways.

The walls spread out away from her, all with that strange old wood and rusted iron girder motif. Strangest of all, to her at least, was the fact that there were racked rows of electric lights above the platforms and pillars, shining down brilliantly on them and providing all the light in the area. Had the UAC installed it? She looked around again, seeing how she could progress. Her eyes fell on a door-shaped hole cut into the wall over to the left.

She moved slowly across the rock shelf, pistol in hand.

And she almost took a tumble down into the acid. There was a gap between the platform and the doorway! It was about a foot across, and it didn't look like anything had ever been there. Who had built this?! _Why_ in the _fuck_ would anyone build something like this!? Trying to set aside her rising anger, Kyra waited, listening. There didn't seem to be anything in the huge room with her, nothing on any of those pillars or walkways, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was lurking around, just out of sight.

Maybe watching her.

Mustering her courage, Kyra jumped the gap, then came to a rigid halt as she landed on the other side, which was just a two foot wide wooden walkway. Dead ahead of her was another pool of, this time, bubbling lava. Lava? No time to rage at the insanity of this place. It just wasn't going to make sense, she was just going to have to accept that. The room she'd come to was much smaller than the cavern she'd been in before, the walls made of bare rock again. The wooden walkway, which was actually mostly stone beneath the wood, she could see, ran along the peripheral of the room, leading to another doorway that was just a few feet to her left. Unfortunately, the walkway wasn't a complete circle, there was a gap between her and the other door. With a sigh, she began moving along the path, keeping a sharp eye out for hostiles.

She wanted _out_ of this place, wanted back to somewhere familiar, somewhere sane.

Still nothing presented itself and assaulted her as she reached the next doorway. She found herself staring down a hallway of more of that gray-green brickwork. There were bullet holes in the walls and a few pools of blood in the hallway. Spent shell casings on the stone floor. She moved carefully down it. About halfway down was a red platform built right into the floor. She hesitated as she reached it. Something weird about it.

It seemed to glow with a faint, red light and hummed gently with power.

Hesitantly, Kyra placed her foot on it.

There was a flash-pop and suddenly she was somewhere different. She jerked in surprise, looking around the room she abruptly found herself in, but she was still alive. If this was a trap, it was a poor one, she thought to herself as she studied the area. The room she'd come to was paneled in wood hammered with rows of rusty nails. Besides that, two things immediately leaped out at her: the first was that there was a big gap in the wall, the second was that there was more evidence of humanity in this godforsaken place.

Three crates, two of them closed, a foldout table with a smashed laptop on it, and…

"Oh yes," she whispered. Glancing behind her, making sure she was still alone, Kyra holstered the pistol and quickly snatched up the assault rifle leaned against the wall. She checked it out: fully loaded, looked to be in good condition. And, what was this? Under the table, a scattering of magazines. She quickly snatched them up as well, checked them over, and pocketed them. After that she took a moment to pry open one of the crates. The opened one was cleared out, and unfortunately the one she opened had nothing but tech parts in it.

A hissing sound suddenly filled the room and Kyra's heart leaped into her throat as she grabbed the rifle and whirled around, already sidestepping automatically. And thank fucking God for that, because the thing that had so successfully snuck up on her was apparently another one that launched goddamned projectiles.

It was an evil flying pumpkin.

That was the first thing that popped into her head. A goddamned flying pumpkin with a giant, madly grinning mouth and a big cyclopean eye. It opened its mouth and belched a ball of...plasma? Lightning? right at her. She barely managed to avoid it and, tucking the rifle to her shoulder, hit full automatic and cut loose. Kyra emptied the entire magazine into that fucking monster. Before she turned it into shredded gory pulp, she managed to get a decent view of what in the actual fuck she was facing this time around. And it freaked her the fuck out.

It was like a Halloween pumpkin carved by a madman in Hell.

It was the size of a beach ball, covered in knotted, leathery red flesh. It was a little like a disembodied head, and its face was roughly ninety percent mouth. It was like the mouth of a fucking Great White, lined with saw teeth. A single burning eye was set above that mouth, a sickly yellow-green in color. It seemed to grin with a gleeful maddened malignancy as it tried to murder her. Six big, ugly spikes of bone crowned its skull.

Before it died the nastiest death she'd probably ever seen, it managed to fire another ball of blue-white energy that she barely ended up avoiding, though she could feel the raw energy coming off of it crackling along her flesh. Then the thing popped and splattering the whole area with its pulpy guts. She groaned as some of it got onto her uniform.

"What in the actual _fuck_ was that?!" she cried, moving forward to stand at the edge of the opening. As she looked for its remains, Kyra realized that she was actually up and to the right of where she'd initially come in, and she had a good view of the huge room with the acid floor and the platforms and pillars. And there was the shredded remains of the popped pumpkin some twenty five feet down, sizzling and dissolving away in the sludge.

"Where did you even come from?" she whispered, looking around.

As she did, her eyes widened, zeroing in on another one floating out from behind a pillar. It released another one of those hackle-raising hisses and loosed another ball of energy at her. Kyra sidestepped and returned fire, this time switching it to three-round burst and trying to conserve ammo, figure out these thing's tolerances, because obviously there was going to be more. She threw several volleys at it, landing almost all of it them in its big awful mouth. After a quartet of three-round bursts, the thing finally gave up the ghost and the back of it popped, spraying dark red gore all over the area before collapsing into the toxic waste below with a loud, angry bellow. As its remains finished splashing, Kyra waited and listened.

Nothing more. At least, nothing more that was obvious.

Then again, there wasn't much that was particularly subtle about this cavalcade of horror. Although...she shuddered. That thing had snuck right up on her ass! The hovering fuck was dead silent until it had hissed at her. Kyra sighed. Always something new going on ever since she'd hit dirt on Europa. She scoped out the situation as best she could, determined that she was indeed alone again, then finished her search of the room she'd been teleported to, finding nothing but more tech parts in the second crate as well. As she looked back at the red square in the center of the room, she frowned deeply.

A concept that had bugged her for a long time growing up came from an old, old show called Star Trek. Well, it had a lot of different names and different series, but there was one sci-fi concept prevalent in all of them: teleportation. If she remembered right, the basic idea was that a computer scanned you in one place, all the way down to every last molecule, copied that data, then reassembled you from that copy in another place.

The obvious question was: was this actually you anymore? Or was it just a flash-clone that had all of your memories up to that point? Or was there something like a soul, some objectively provable form of consciousness that couldn't be replicated? When she'd gone through the gateway, she had more of an idea of traveling through like...a wormhole, maybe. That wasn't the same as teleportation. But this pad here…

 _This_ was instant teleportation.

How did it achieve this? Was it the same principle, just experienced differently? Or was it closer to being reassembled? Was it some form of teleportation that scientists or even sci-fi authors hadn't theorized about yet?

Was she still Kyra Morgan?

Or was she just a clone?

Did it matter? In a bigger sense, she thought it did, but functionally speaking? Right now and right here? Well...no. She _felt_ the same, and that was going to have to be good enough. With a sigh, she stepped back onto the rusted red pad and reappeared in the original hallway in a flash of light. As she moved slowly down it, checking out a few open doors that led to a few other bare, stonework rooms, Kyra again found herself wondering what the fuck this place was for. What any of it was for. Who had built it? Why?

Inevitably she kept coming back to the same conclusion: there was no rhyme or reason to this godforsaken nightmare. But was that true? Either there was no reason, or the reason was lost to the ages (how old was this dimension?) or alien and incomprehensible to her. So it didn't matter. But her brain kept picking at it nonetheless.

Finally, she found a doorway that led to one of the walkways that cut across the acid bath below and she moved carefully across it, keeping a sharp eye out for anymore of the damned floating pumpkins. How did they fit into this anyway? What the fuck was the hierarchy of this place? How did floating, energy-ball-spitting, one-eyed pumpkins fit together with those awful fiends? Or the zombies? Or the pig pinkies?

Probably the same answer as the architecture.

About fifteen minutes of careful navigation brought her to the end of the poorly constructed maze of pillars and walkways, and back onto solid ground. Solid ground being more of that ugly rock. She found her way to a room tucked away at the back of the area that held only a somewhat more intricate looking teleportation platform.

Resisting the urge to say a small prayer, Kyra stepped onto the platform, hoped for the best, and disappeared in a flash of light.


	57. EPISODE 02: Sever the Wicked

Kyra reappeared beneath a maddening, bloody sky.

A few things became immediately apparent to her. The first was that she had come through this teleporter intact and armed. The second was that she was facing two zombies with their backs to her. They were growling and muttering incoherently to each other, or to themselves. Either way, she cut their conversation short by putting a bullet into the backs of their skulls.

And promptly woke up half of Hell.

Kyra felt her whole body go cold as she heard a symphony of monstrous voices roar, scream, shriek, and wail. She was standing on a raised wooden platform. All around her she could see more walls of wood and stone bricks. A small flotilla of flying skulls was off to her left, and about ten feet below her, mainly in the other directions, was a vast expanse of wood that was host to about two dozen fiends and zombies that had suddenly become aware of her presence. And promptly opened fire on her. There were a lot fireballs, but she noticed a fair amount of lead being hurled at her, too. The zombies were armed.

And apparently knew how to use them.

Definitely bad.

But those flaming skulls were worse, and the fireballs were easy enough to dodge. Though really it was luck with the bullets and occasional shotgun shell being hurled at her. She really needed some damned armor. Kyra took aim and counted targets. Half a dozen. She squeezed the trigger as she zeroed her sights on the first skull. A three-round burst hit it hard and popped it into a spray of charred bone. It fell into a bubbling collection of lava below it. There seemed to be a river of the stuff dividing the local area.

Great. She'd have to find some way across that probably.

Kyra fired and popped the rest of them, emptying a magazine and then barely managing to avoid another pair of fireballs as she slapped a fresh magazine in. The fiends were getting impatient, shrieking wildly at her as they kept trying to hit her. She moved fast, strafing as she flipped to single-shot and began popping targets with extreme prejudice. A fiend went down. Then another. Two more. A zombie bit the dust as old blood sprayed out of its ruined cranium. Kyra's heart pounded harder, her blood pumping like fire in her veins, her head crystal clear and screaming with battlelust and the pure, unfiltered thrill of combat.

She split skulls and spilled demon blood. Alien blood. Whatever the fuck it was, by the time she'd emptied a second magazine, the wooden platform below was awash with the damned stuff. Two dozen corpses lay sprawled out and Kyra realized she was laughing. Only this didn't feel like 'I'm-losing-my-shit' laughter, this was the semi-crazed but still coherent laughter she'd had to bury deep and hard inside of her when she was sometimes in the thick of battle. Only here she didn't have to hide anything. There was just her and the inhuman monsters that would kill her at the earliest possible convenience. And there was something liberating about that.

There were no moral quandaries, no ethical debates, no hesitation, no uncertainty. No rules of engagement, no war crimes.

She had serious doubt the Geneva Convention covered literal goddamned monsters.

"You're enjoying yourself, you crazy fuck," Kyra whispered to herself as her laughter died away. Distantly, something howled.

She looked up at that bloody sky, then around her at the fortress of wood and stone she'd come to. Well, if she intended to keep fighting this war and get back home, she was going to have to keep her head on straight.

Something much closer growled.

Well, on a swivel, anyway.

The first thing she noticed was that there was a bridge on the platform with her, and it was apparently the only way across the lava river, and...it was in a cage of black metal that looked old, but sturdy.

And it was locked.

"Shit," she whispered, studying it closely. Finally, she found a little slot next to what might be called a handle. Well...was it some kind of keyhole? Kyra looked around, surveying the area. Where could a key be?

Well, she wouldn't find it just standing around.

She marched briskly across the platform she was standing on, checking its peripheral. There was a platform with a very old lever attached to it. Frowning, Kyra stepped aboard and, after making double sure nothing was in the immediate area, she pulled the lever. She gasped as the platform shot down. Who'd built this? Who'd built _any_ of this? She stepped off the platform and began checking the corpses of the zombies she'd killed.

They probably had at least some ammo on them, and maybe a working shotgun. She knew _someone_ had been firing a shotgun during that assault. It was hard not to keep looking up at that red sky as she checked the corpses. It was so...alien. It was probably the single most obvious clue that she was in a completely different dimension. It didn't look natural was the thing. It looked like...CGI, special effects, like some impossible optical illusion. Why was it that way? Was she on a planet? What else was there? Inside a planet? A universe where there were no planets, just an infinite landscape? Was that possible?

Technically speaking, in a reality where there could be not only an infinite universe, but infinite alternate universes, everything was possible.

"What's that?" she whispered to herself, spying something poking out from beneath another zombie corpse up ahead. She hurried over to it and flipped the ugly bastard over, then felt her heart skip a beat. "Oh I missed you," she muttered as she picked up the shotgun. She never thought she'd be so grateful to see a damned shotgun.

She checked it over. The thing had definitely seen better days, but looked basically functional. It was empty, though. She continued her search. Looking over the bodies, she felt an unhappiness settle over her, tinged with a bit of guilt. All these humans...so many of them Space Marines. All of them taken over by those damned flying skulls. Most of them probably didn't deserve this. Were they aware? Was there any humanity left in there? Anything left of who they had been before? God, she hoped not. She couldn't imagine the absolute hell it would be to be trapped in a rotting body with no control over it, a passenger in your own corpse, undying until someone blew your head off. If that was true, it just made her want to kill them more.

The ultimate mercy killing.

By the time she finished her sweep of the area, she managed to find enough shells to load the shotgun, and another two magazines for her pistol. After a moment's consideration, she switched to her sidearm. Not really enough ammo for the shotgun or rifle right now. After finishing a sweep of the area and the corpses, Kyra found just a pair of doors. Everywhere else led to a wall or the lava river. With a sigh, she selected one of the doors and opened it up. Another descending stairwell, although this one was made of wood and didn't seem to descend quite as far. Holding the pistol firmly, she moved slowly downwards.

The stairs came to an end into a broad, low room, again made of wood hammered in with old, rusty nails. It was totally empty, just a square of space, lit again by those electric lights installed in the ceiling. They also looked old. The air was thick with tension. Kyra moved slowly into the room, her footsteps cautious and hesitant. Was she missing something? Why did this place even exist? Maybe it had once held something or-

Something slammed hard behind her. She whirled around and saw that a panel had fallen across the exit, effectively sealing her in. Her heart turned to ice in her chest and a loud grinding sound began to fill the room. Spinning back around, Kyra saw that the far wall was raising up into the ceiling. A forest of pale pink legs was slowly being revealing.

"Oh fuck the hell out of me," she whispered in stark terror.

This was going to be difficult.

She immediately snapped up the shotgun as she counted off the horrors she was now trapped with. There were seven of the bastards. How was she going to get out of this one? Kyra shouldered the pump action and got to work, firing before the wall finished raising. The first shell was good: it went right into one of the big open mouths of the first ugly pink bastard. The back of its head blew open and sprayed the others with demon blood. She fired off another two shells as the wall finished grinding into place. One turned one of the golden eyes of a second pinky into a cloud of gore and the other hit it right in its ugly forehead, spraying its brains across the area. It dropped. Then the others were charging her, roaring and slobbering.

She began backing up, counting her steps automatically, as she pumped another shell out. It blew the horn off of one of the uglies. A few seconds later she had emptied her shotgun and hadn't managed to bring down a single one, though she'd damaged several of them. They were bleeding a lot but it just seemed to piss them off more than anything. The shotgun was drained and she let it hang by the sling, snatching up the rifle and flipping to full auto. She squeezed the trigger, aiming into the raging stampede that was rapidly closing in on her.

She managed to get through half the magazine before they were too close. One of them let out a furious roar and collapsed, falling into a twitching mass and bleeding out rapidly. Three down, four to go, and not nearly enough room. Kyra sprinted away, off to the right, listening to them snap their jaws and snort heavily as they gave chase. They were, at least, kind of slow. She spun around, dug in her heels and emptied the rest of the magazine into the face of the closest ugly demonic bastard. Blood sprayed as a dozen nasty wounds opened up. One eye turned into a geyser of gore and three of the shots went into its big mouth.

As the gun clicked empty, the pinky fell, momentarily tripping up the others. It gave her just enough time to run deeper into the room, towards where they had initially come from, and frantically shove another magazine into her rifle. She aimed and fired again, hosing the next ugly thing down with as much concentrated fire as she could. The good news was that her bullets turned its face into chewed up, smoking meat and toppled it as well, leaving her with just two of the nasty things still stomping around.

The bad news was that she'd forgotten that was her last magazine.

"Shit! Shit! _Fuck!_ " she screamed as she fumbled for her pistol, abandoning her rifle. The two remainders kept on moving towards her. She got the pistol and began firing as she continued backing away from them, keeping the dimensions of the room and her position within it firmly in mind as she continued this miserable skirmish.

It took about ninety seconds to kill the last two things, but it felt like ninety minutes. In the process, she had to empty her pistol three times, and she killed the last one mainly by luck. It was coming for her, and she'd let herself get boxed in by corpses. In a fit of desperation, with the big thing breathing down on her (its breath smelled like a square mile of carrion and sewage) she'd pulled out her hatchet and drove it as hard as she could into one eye. The thing began stumbling around, squealing like a pig, and she finished it off with the remainder of the bullets currently in her pistol. When it died, she stood there for several minutes, trembling with terror and raw adrenaline, not believing that it was truly over.

But eventually her military mind reasserted full control, and she silently began the process of searching the room again, as a new portion of it had been opened up, and retrieving her weapons. She found two things: a lever that opened the door that had shut behind her, and what could only be described as a skull keycard. It was flat, in the shape of a skull, and red.

It looked just about the right size to fit in that slot.

Kyra walked stiffly back upstairs. Another fiend had wandered into the area from somewhere else and she put two shots into its head automatically.

"Well..." she whispered to herself, glancing back the way she'd come, "I sure as fucking fuck did _not_ enjoy _that._ "

This raised several questions. That had been a trap.

A trap made this whole situation a lot more dangerous. She honestly had not seen that coming, because something like this hadn't happened yet. How many more traps were there in this funhouse of horror? And someone had locked those seven pinkies up in that little space on...on what? The off chance that a human would come walking into the room? What if it had been a fiend walking in? She hadn't stepped on anything as far as she had been able to tell, there were no sensors in that room from what she'd been able to find.

Her mere presence was enough to set it off.

So that meant she was going to have to be even more careful, which made this place somehow even more horrible to be in. Kyra debated with herself for a little while about whether or not she should just cross the bridge, or check out the second door in the area. Ultimately she made herself do it, because there might be something useful in there and leaving any stone unturned just didn't feel right in this place.

As cautious as ever, she slunk carefully down the steps and found herself in a small crossroads. Three alcoves moved away from the central room, and…

"Holy shit," she whispered, relaxing slightly.

This had apparently been a human outpost. Each of the alcoves had something in it. One was an impromptu and very small infirmary, with a single examination bed, a workstation hooked up to it, and a medical cabinet. Another was some kind of work area where a pair of chairs sat before a complex console, maybe running scans on the area or storing data of some kind. And the third area...was her current favorite area.

It looked like a makeshift armory.

Although it seemed like most of the equipment had been smashed, especially the consoles and medical equipment, and a lot of the useful supplies had been cleared out, something extremely, painfully useful to her had survived intact. It was inside of a sealed locker that she had to break into, and it looked pristine and untouched.

A suit of green security armor.

It wasn't that special, tough as nails blue combat armor, but this would absolutely do the job right now. She almost felt like weeping in joy as she pulled on the armor. She had been needing this ever since she'd hit dirt in that pod. As she finished putting it all on by securing the helmet and then running a check on it with the little screen built into the right wrist, she felt a palpable sense of relief...and of power.

She felt powerful.

Kyra put a clamp on that: feeling too powerful made you do stupid things. She fully intended to survive this mess. The suit check came back positive: it was powered up, atmospherically sealed, and ready for all sorts of combat. She didn't tap into the reserve of oxygen, just in case she needed it, (although she'd like to, this place fucking reeked, but at least the filters built into the vents would help somewhat). On top of that, she managed to find enough fat red shells scattered around to refill her shotgun.

The assault rifle was still dead, though.

So she let the two bigger guns hang by their slings, and went back to her pistol. After checking to see if there was anything else that was useful, and finding that there wasn't, she returned to the surface, rode that odd little lift back up to the platform she had initially appeared on, and returned to the locked cage.

She slipped the skull-key into the slot and, lo and behold, it unlocked. The door opened up. Kyra moved through it and the opposite door quickly, finally crossing the river and coming to the other half of this wooden fortress.

Now what?

An already unfortunately familiar hiss sounded and Kyra twisted to the right. A pair of pumpkins had floated up over the fortress's wall and were making a beeline for her. They each belched balls of energy at her. She sidestepped one but the other smacked her right in the chestplate. It packed a wallop, but she just stumbled a bit and wheezed as the breath was knocked out of her. Sucking in air, Kyra aimed her shotgun and fired. She didn't want to use it again with such a limited supply of ammo, but these big bastards had earned it.

The first shell nailed one of them right in its big headlamp eye and burst it in an ugly shower of gore. The thing roared and began firing off balls of energy at random. Kyra ignored it, since it no longer had a bead on her, and fired at the second one, which was lining up more shots of its own, apparently blind to its partners pain. Or maybe it just didn't care. Were these things capable of empathy? She didn't think so.

Were they even sentient?

Or was she looking at animals?

The shell went into its big mouth, but that just seemed to piss it off and it drew closer, firing more balls of energy. Another one winged her shoulder as she was forced to sidestep a lucky shot from the blind one and she fired again. That one hit something vital and popped it, spraying its guts all over the place as it fell from the air and splattered into the wooden deck. Kyra decided to save her remaining shells and instead popped the second floating thing with a full magazine from her pistol. She sighed as she reloaded.

She needed more ammo. And something with a bit more substance, a bit more firepower.

A rocket launcher would be nice. Or at least one of those big fuck-off chainguns. Now _that_ was a gun. She'd only ever used them mounted on the backs of vehicles or on the sides of buildings, but she knew there were models you could carry around. Hell, she'd take another one of those plasma rifles. That thing had bite.

Kyra began scouting the area. The good news was that there only seemed to be a single door on this side. The better news was that it housed exactly what she was looking for: a gateway. A portal back to her own reality. It was a smaller version of the one she had traveled through to get here. And the workstation it was hooked up to was intact and functional. The place looked like it had been hit hard at some point by an intense firefight. She cleared out the area, making sure she was really alone, then set in to work at the workstation.

It didn't take too long to get the gateway fired up and linked with Obsidian Station. It was the only available option. As she approached the swirling mass of darkness, Kyra felt a chill ripple through her, and then an icy stone settled into her gut yet again. What if the same thing happened? What if she reappeared nude and defenseless? After getting this arsenal again and even the armor? What if she ended up just somewhere else in Hell?

What other choice did she have?

Right now, this was her best option. Which didn't make it a good one...really, it was her only option.

Gathering her courage, she hoped for the best and stepped into the portal.


	58. EPISODE 02: Obsidian Station

She reappeared in a stink of brimstone and a flash of black light and a jolt of pain that crackled through her entire body.

Kyra barely managed to get the visor up as she crashed to the metal deckplates and vomited. Only it was really mostly a waste because there wasn't enough left in her stomach to come up, just a bit of bile and spit that fell out of her mouth as the dry-heaves wracked her body. She groaned sickly, absolutely loathing the feeling of vomiting, and something groaned in response. Kyra looked up, her vision blurry, and saw a dim room around her. An uncertain feature was lurching slowly towards her. She groped for her pistol, her hand unsteady, and finally pulled it free of her holster. She aimed up, still crouching down, trembling in agony, and squeezed the trigger. Lucky shot: went right through the zombie's skull and dropped it.

When she didn't hear anything else, Kyra sighed softly and stayed crouched there, hugging herself. The other teleports had _not_ felt this bad. About five seconds later, it occurred to her that she had pulled her pistol from its holster.

That she still had a holster.

That she had been forced to raise her visor to avoid vomiting on it.

She'd come through the portal with everything intact.

"Worth it," she groaned weakly, then hawked and spat a few more times. She needed to get a drink of something. Preferably some goddamned vodka. After allowing herself weakness for another twenty seconds, Kyra finally forced herself back up to her feet. She wasn't done yet, not by a long shot, probably.

There was always more fucking work to do.

"Where the fuck am I?" she whispered, spitting one more time before lowering the visor back into place. She hit the light amp function and surveyed her new surroundings. They looked vaguely familiar, and she realized that the place she was in resembled the place she'd initially left on Typhon Station. Oh hell, she wasn't back there, was she? Well, that seemed like something worth knowing, so she began moving slowly around the room.

It took close to ten minutes, but she cleared the lab, managing to find the lights and another magazine for her rifle, which she promptly reloaded. She also made a very unhappy discovery, something that disturbed her on a deep level: the lab was changing. One section of the far right wall had been replaced by ugly green brick. It looked completely unnatural and incongruous alongside the high-tech polished metal of the lab. The floor around it had been partially replaced with more of that ugly wood she'd seen so much of just recently.

"Who did this?" she whispered. _Why_ would anyone do this? Did the monsters do it? How? What the fuck was happening here?

She heard a deep growl coming from somewhere else in the complex she'd come to and put those thoughts aside again. They always seemed to intrude. After a complete sweep of the lab, including a few smaller storage rooms that held nothing but technical spare parts and one work area meant for repair of the no doubt dozens of intricate pieces of technology that helped this particular room run, Kyra approached the exit.

Why had she come through this particular portal with all her things intact? Not that she was complaining, but it didn't make sense. She at least had the vague notion that there was a fundamental difference between the portals between dimensions, and the portals between areas within the same dimension that she had used. It, for whatever reason, made more sense that those simpler portals would leave her things intact, but maybe the inter-dimensional portals were more complex. Maybe that first one had gone wrong in that fashion?

Obviously there had to be _some_ way to get stuff through the portals beyond just flesh, because there existed UAC technology and gear on the other side. Well, she supposed it made enough sense that that first portal had simply malfunctioned, since she'd appeared somewhere where there had been no other portal to receive her, and obviously she hadn't made it here, where she was supposed to have gone in the first place.

Despite everything, Kyra did feel somewhat better to be in a human installation, to be back in her own reality. At least, as far as she knew she was. If this was Obsidian Station, (still had to figure that out), then this should be Io. While that was pretty far out there from Earth, it was still in her own universe.

That was illogically comforting.

Maybe because she knew that if she at least found some kind of vessel, she could figure out how to get back to the rest of her own civilization. Even if that civilization sucked most the time. Her stomach growled as she stood by the door, staring at the control panel that would open it. She needed food, and water, and a rest. Her whole body ached, especially her head, and she'd kill for the chance to just sit down for a little while.

But not yet.

She hit the button. The door slid open to reveal...a long hallway that was half wood, half metal stamped with the UAC logo. Rows of what appeared to be red pots with bubbling, boiling liquid inside of them flanked her to either side, stretching the length of the corridor. Corpses had been crucified to the walls with what appeared to be an industrial strength nail gun. Dried blood snaked away from their wrists and feet.

There had to be about twenty or so of them, all of them stripped nude. She imagined they were a collection of personnel from the station, scientists, Marines, technicians. She walked briskly down the corridor, not wanting to be here any longer than possible, her own anger rising. More defiling of corpses, more tragedy, more senseless slaughter. She reached the far door and opened it, too. An antechamber awaited her, along with three other doors, one in each wall. There was good lighting in this part, at least.

One door led to a Security Station, which seemed a bit more complex than just a checkpoint, another led to the tram area, and the third led to dormitories for the scientists. She ignored that for the moment and headed straight into security. Security centers were like oases for her at this point. The door was partially open and spit sparks when she hit the button. It gave another inch, then the motor inside died. Sighing, she forced it open a little further, using her suit-enhanced strength, and then squeezed in through the opening.

As she had come to expect, the place was a wreck, but at least it was bigger, so there were more likely places for someone to have hidden supplies. She checked it out for hostiles first, finding a huge bank of security monitors that showed nothing worthwhile, a trio of workstations that probably helped run the whole area, a break room and a bathroom at the back, and finally an armory. That room was the most trashed of all, but she performed a thorough search of it anyway. Her mind stumbled to and fro as her hands and eyes worked to clear the room and spot any possible supplies. She seemed to have gone back to that glazed disbelief.

This still felt so impossible, even though she was literally living it at present. The mind was such a weird thing. It could be ticking along fine for months or years so long as there was a routine. Then something breaks that routine and it's like a fighter pilot getting jettisoned from her plane or a sailor being thrown out to sea. It felt like you had very little control over your brain in those circumstances. But being a soldier in today's battlefields meant routine was often broken, shattered even, and you had to fight for your life.

Kyra had assumed that she'd gotten used to having her routine shattered, that she couldn't be surprised anymore. But this was, she realized now, a lie. It wasn't that she had gotten used to the basic notion of broken routine, it was that the way her routine was broken had itself become routine. This situation was so fucked that she apparently wasn't entirely sure how to cope with it. Sometimes she felt like she had a good handle on things and killing monsters sure focused her well, but during the downtime where nothing was screaming at her, emotions and thoughts began to assault her from a dozen different directions.

It was a mess.

Her search of the armory at least yielded a few results. The first, and maybe most useful, was a rucksack. Being able to carry more supplies would help, provided she could find more goddamned supplies to carry. She found some suit repair kits and stored them away in the pack, as well as an emergency full-on Medikit that had somehow survived the chaos. She also managed to secure enough shotgun shells to top it off, and four more magazines for the assault rifle. Not a great haul but not a terrible one, she supposed.

Kyra left the armory and moved back into the control room, then began the process of trying to boot up the biggest, most important looking workstation. There were a few things she wanted to check out. She needed a map, maybe to see if any logs survived, and, primarily, another search for signs of human life. The minutes slipped by in bloody quietude as she worked the console. Like basically every other one she'd come to, it had suffered damage, and it was clear that the internal network was an absolute wreck.

She at least confirmed that she was indeed on Obsidian Station.

The only map she could find was one of the building she was in, what was referred to as Site Alpha. All it showed was that, with the exception of the tram station and the dormitories, she'd seen all there was to see. And then, finally, a bit of luck: the LifeScan was functional. She set it to its maximum range and then had it begin the scan, looking for other survivors. She knew that it was entirely possible that she was alone on this other moon.

While the scan did its thing, she moved to the security monitors and checked through them. Those that still worked mostly showed things she didn't want to see, but stuff she had already seen. Mainly corpses and blood-splashed and bullet-riddled corridors. But in some of them, she saw more of that seemingly impossible morphing some of the environment was undergoing. She saw more of that weird wood, and in some places there were old brass torches mounted on the walls, burning with a strange green fire.

One section of wall in presumably one of the dormitories corridors looked like it had veins growing along it now, veins of black blood that grew up the side of the metallic wall like some kind of malignant creeping plant. Where could it possibly be coming from? Was it some kind of side effect of the demonic presence? Was it something they were doing intentionally? She didn't like it, and not just because it freaked her out, but more so because it seemed that this effect was going to cause some kind of blowout in the hull.

Wood didn't hold up so well in space.

She saw some more zombies wandering around, except...they didn't seem to be wandering the dormitories complex. They seemed almost to be searching, or patrolling. It was eerie. They weren't entirely just stumbling, drooling, mindless things anymore. They might actually be shaping up to be a real threat. Well, shit. There were some fiends there, too, but just a few. She'd have to go clear that place out.

She was for some reason itching for a fight. Maybe it was because it would take her mind off of things, or maybe it was just because it was familiar at this point. A soft chime got her attention and Kyra turned back to the LifeScan.

It came back with two hits.

One was her, the other was...in Command Control, in another structure.

"Oh finally," she whispered, and grabbed her assault rifle. She took another moment to study what she could see from the scan. It was somewhat helpful. Only two of the other buildings interested her: Site Bravo and Site Echo. Bravo had Command Control and the Military HQ. Echo had another teleportation complex. Site Charlie had a hangar, but somehow she didn't trust that there were any ships there, let alone any that might have engines powerful enough to get her to civilization. But she would make sure to check it out at least.

Once Kyra had committed as much of the rudimentary map as she could to memory, she left the security complex and made her way over to the dormitories wing. She settled into a tactical mindset as she slipped into the network of corridors and began making her way slowly through it, checking the corners, carefully maneuvering into new corridors, doing a standard sweep and clear of any open doors she came across. It was slow going, made all the worse by sounds she kept hearing. Kyra ran into her first hostile in the area about a minute in. She crept towards another break in the corridor, a cross-section, and then froze.

Something muttered quietly from somewhere ahead, either to the left or right. She came closer, then waited, listening closely. Another sound, like someone shifting, and then she had it. Right. She prepared herself, then peered around the corner. It was a good thing she had her rifle ready to go, because there was a zombie wielding a pistol maybe five feet away. If it was another human, she might not have survived the encounter, but as it was, even a zombie capable of holding and firing a firearm still had slow reflexes.

She put a shot through its forehead and dropped it. From behind her something else let out a roar and a shotgun sounded, hitting the wall next to her. She spun around, dropped to one knee, and lined up the next shot. Squeezing the trigger twice more, she caught another zombie once in the neck, then turned its right eye to free-flying gore with the second well-placed shot. More roars sounded and she heard a few shrieks from elsewhere in the complex. Great. Kyra prepared herself. She decided to go to them, to keep them guessing.

She worked her way through the network of corridors, dropping one, then two, then half a dozen zombies, followed by a pair of fiends that hurled fireballs her way as fast and as hard as they could. One of them punched her in the chestplate and made her lose her breath, but she put three shots into the bastard's big open mouth and sprayed the walls with its brains. Or what passed for brains in these stupid, spiny fuckers. In the end, she traded a pair of magazines for her rifle for another three shotgun shells, a magazine for the pistol, and a baker's dozen dead bad guys. Not a bad trade altogether. As she finished clearing out the scientist's dormitories and began making for the tramway, she found herself more grateful than ever for the suit of armor.

It had deflected a few shots and that fireball pretty well, little worse for the wear. But as she came into the tram station itself, she was even more grateful for the armor, because two things became apparent to her. The first was that the tram was not going anywhere. Someone, or more likely something, had trashed it so bad it wasn't even on its track any longer. The second thing she determined, as she prepared to simply hoof it across the tramway, was that the glass shield had been breached.

After double-checking to make sure her suit was not only intact, but topped off with oxygen, Kyra stepped into the airlock and began to cycle through.

The long day just kept getting longer.


	59. EPISODE 02: Evil Gets An Upgrade

When the computer had informed her that the tramway tunnel, the glass tube that connected the buildings, snaking its way across the surface of the moon, was 'compromised', she'd assumed that it had sustained some damage. Kyra had no idea that it was a such a fucking wreck. Huge pieces of the glass had been smashed in by what looked like explosions and there were bodies all over the place, littering the dozens of meters of tunnel ahead of her. A lot of them were fiend corpses, and there were a lot of zombies, too, and pinkies. She saw a few of the deflated corpses of the pumpkins, too. Man, this must have been one hell of a battle.

She stood there staring down the length of the tunnel for longer than she should have, and finally made herself hop down off the platform. Landing with a soft grunt, she began making her way along the passageway, moving cautiously among the dead. She paused every now and then when she found an intact human corpse to search it, but after a few times it became obvious that someone, or something, had been by this battlefield already and picked it clean. No spare rounds, no intact weapons, no magazines of ammo to collect.

She was so focused on any potential lingering threat on the inside of the tunnel that she missed the fact that there was a threat outside of it. The first notion she had that something was wrong was her instincts spiking a warning as she heard the bare faintest noise, and then a hiss sounded behind her, followed by several more.

"Fuck!" she screamed, turning around and raising the rifle.

A half dozen pumpkins had floated in behind her through the holes in the tunnel. The flotilla began their bombardment, launching a half dozen balls of blue electricity her way. She began backing up, shifting to the right, preparing to open fire, wondering how she was going to get out of this one, when she nearly tripped over something that clanked against her boot. Sparing a bare half-second glance down, she saw it for what it was: an air canister. A plan flew together in her mind and she knelt, scooped it up, and hurled it as hard as she could towards the bastards. She tracked it with her rifle, preparing to blast it, but she didn't even get the chance.

One of them did it for her.

A collective roar of pain and fury went up as the concussive blast of the ruptured tank slammed into them. Kyra turned and sprinted away, running towards the far airlock. It looked like it was miles away. That blast bought her a few seconds, disorienting the floating uglies, but it wasn't long before she came under fire again. She ignored them as best she could, just running and jumping over corpses, trying not to get tripped up.

She made it thirty feet, fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty…

Finally, after what felt like ages, her muscles burning even with the help of the suit of armor, she all but slammed into that silver airlock door. She hit the open button and turned around. They were closer. They'd almost kept pace with her. As it opened up, she returned fire, throwing a few three-round bursts their way, and hitting two of them. Then the door was open and she slipped through. Smashing her fist on the cycle button, she watched the door close, the pumpkins disappearing from view. For a moment, she just leaned against the wall, getting her breath back.

That had been close. Way too close.

This place was really starting to wear her down. And why not? She'd literally been through hell at this point. All too quickly, the airlock finished its cycle and the inner door opened. She came out on the bottom floor of the corresponding tram station, where they stored all the extra crap and technical bits. Flicking on the flashlight mounted at the end of the barrel, she moved slowly around that area to clear it out, chasing away the shadows and making sure nothing lurked in that darkness. She found only a single zombie, one that looked like it hadn't received whatever upgrades the others had been apparently getting recently, as it hardly reacted to her.

She put a shot in its forehead and then climbed up to the next level. After clearing it out with a similar proficiency and finding nothing waiting for her, Kyra headed for the exit. But before she could get there, a voice came to her.

" _Identify yourself."_

It was a man's voice, obviously coming from some kind of radio.

"Who's there?" she replied, trying to track the source.

" _My name is Doctor Jensen. Identify yourself."_

There. A terminal tucked away in the corner. She moved over to it and studied it. "My name is Staff Sergeant Morgan."

" _Where did you come from, Staff Sergeant?"_

"It's a long story, but the short version is I crashed landed at Typhon Station and took a quick jaunt across hell to get here."

" _Then you know a lot."_

"Not enough. I take it you're one of the assholes responsible for this shit show?"

He sighed. _"Yes, I'm afraid so."_

"Fan-fucking-tastic. Look, I need some way to either call for help or get to somewhere closer to civilization. I need to report this fucking mess."

" _I see. I'm afraid conventional means are out. Our hangar was destroyed in an explosion during the initial invasion. I've personally picked the place over. We have no more vessels. Not that it really mattered anyway, considering we had no ships with engines powerful enough to get us to Earth or even Mars. And our communications are completely shot. But I have a deal to make you."_

"What's that?" she asked cautiously.

" _I'm sure you've seen corruption taking over the station, the unnatural fusion of our own existence and hell's?"_

She thought back to the creeping wood, the row of burning red pots, the other weird shit she'd seen so far during her short stay here. "Yeah."

" _As best I've been able to determine, it is being caused by three unique energy sources. I've seen them through the cameras, and I can track them with the internal sensors. They appear as beating human hearts on iron pedestals. Destroy them, and I will reactivate the portal at Site Echo."_

"And where will that get me?"

" _The Moon."_

"You have a fucking base on the Moon, _with a teleporter?!_ " she snapped.

" _Yes. And other bases throughout the solar system, though I'm not privy to most of them. Unfortunately, the portal will not take you directly to our lunar base. The best I can do is put you on the path to a portal that will lead there. I'm afraid you'll have to go back into the other dimension,"_ he explained.

She sighed heavily. "Of fucking course I will. Anything else?"

" _Yes. Once you're finished, come see me at Command Control. I have some information I'll need to pass off to you."_

"You know, another doctor told me the same thing back in Typhon Station. And his PDA didn't survive the trip to Hell because _every fucking thing_ I brought with me got disappeared in the transition," Kyra replied.

" _Which doctor?"_

"Henderson. He died."

" _Hmm. Unfortunate. I likely have a copy of his research. But I should be able to compensate for that. For now, focus on destroying the hearts."_

She sighed softly, considering it. What choice did she have, really? If they had a portal linking to the Moon, then that's where she needed to be. God, the thought of these goddamned things being that close to Earth…

"Jensen...did the UAC have teleportation devices on Earth?" she asked slowly.

He paused for a long time. _"I don't know,"_ he admitted.

"Oh that's fucking great. Fine. Give me a map and the locations."

" _Transmitting now. Plug your suit's radio into the internal comms network so that we can communicate. You should also be able to download a map of the area so that it will overlay your head's up display and identify the locations of the hellbound hearts."_

She hesitated. "Is there some...reason you're calling them that?"

Now he paused. _"Just a reference to an old horror novella."_ He cleared his throat uncomfortably and she resisted the urge to laugh. It was the first time he'd done anything that broke through his flat, scientist-y demeanor. _"One of them is in the Military Headquarters, one is in the Arboretum, and one is in the Machine Shops. Although I have lost my cameras in those regions, the last time I saw them, they all appeared to be heavily guarded."_

"Great."

" _Indeed. I suggest you hurry."_

"Fine. But when I'm done with this, I want some more answers about all this."

" _I'll tell you what I can."_

"Uh-huh. Bye."

She downloaded the map and figured out how to make it display, then disappear, so it didn't distract her while she was fighting, then hooked her radio into the internal comms network of Obsidian Station. With those two things out of the way, she studied the map for a moment and worked out the best route to take. Thankfully, the first location, the Arboretum, was basically within spitting distance, but she didn't like the idea of 'heavily guarded'.

Kyra reloaded the assault rifle and set off.

As she moved through the security checkpoint and into the lobby area beyond, then struck off towards the Arboretum, she really began to focus on what she was actually doing. She was going to destroy a fucking human heart sitting on a pedestal that was apparently responsible for slowly warping reality itself into some sort of hellish nightmare. Never in her life did she envision that she'd be doing something even a quarter this strange.

A howl from somewhere else in the facility derailed her train of thought and set her instincts on edge. This was a new sound, and yet...not new. In fact, it was very familiar, which was why it was so weird to hear it here.

It sounded like a dog howling, like a hunting dog that had spotted its prey.

Were there dogs here? Had the monster corrupted them, as they had the humans? Or was she just imagining things? Well, Kyra supposed she'd find out sooner rather than later. She moved down a broad, low corridor that offered an uncomfortable view out onto the surface of the moon. She picked out several corpses out there from the fighting that had engulfed the area before she'd arrived. So much wasted life.

She sure could use some of those fighters right now to help her out.

The corridor terminated up ahead, the door into the Arboretum was split down the middle, partially open, spitting sparks. It had a lot of dried blood on it. As if seeping out from beneath it, she spied more of that ugly, mottled wood, but that didn't prepare her for just how weird the place was, how much it had changed. As she peered cautiously in through the partially open door, she hesitated, not sure if what she was seeing was real.

The far right wall no longer even remotely resembled the UAC facility. It looked like a fucking castle, like the kind you'd see in old horror vids from way back when, with mad scientists and groaning creations and a million different levers. It even had old, rusted iron bars over the windows and for some crazy reason, about two dozen skulls were stuck across its surface seemingly at random. The floor of the Arboretum was almost totally replaced with the hideous brown wood from the hellscape she'd endured earlier, and it was broken in places, revealing the guts of the facility itself. Another wall looked like it was covered in blue-and-red glowing veins, pulsing randomly, like she was seeing the exterior of some giant alien brain.

The Arboretum itself, which had been made up to resemble a garden, was trashed. Almost all of the plants were dead, and those that weren't didn't look natural. An ugly quagmire of thick brown-green knotty tendrils with spikes growing out of them, each dripping a grotesque black substance, seemed to be taking over the area. And there, at the center of it all, was the pedestal that the good doctor had warned her about.

It looked...well, just about like what she'd pictured in her head. A cylindrical iron pillar maybe three feet tall and half a foot thick supporting a flat platform that was shaped a bit like a diamond sitting on its point, but it'd had the top third of it or so chopped off. And on this platform rested a human heart, an ugly lump of still-beating muscle.

God, she could even hear it.

Kyra stared at the heart, then looked around the room. There were a lot of shadows, a lot of blind spots. How to do this? After another moment or so, she thought: _Why risk it?_ Bringing the rifle up and staring down the scope, she switched to three-round burst and zeroed the sights on the pumping heart. Holding her breath, she steadied her aim, waited just a few seconds, and then squeezed the trigger. The lead crossed the distance in less than half a second. It was a perfect shot, nailing the heart dead center and splattering it all over the place.

The world seemed to be holding its breath.

And then a scream went up. Not one, by a symphony of them, and the entire Arboretum seemed to come alive with movement. Cold black terror shot through her body like a malignant energy as she rapidly began backing away as she saw familiar shapes come stomping out at her. Pinkies. Only they weren't alone.

Dogs. They were dogs.

Only they weren't.

They were _big_ dogs, skinless, slinking horrors that slunk out of the darkness with glowing bloody eyes and mouths stuffed full of razor teeth and huge claws that clacked on the wooden floor. And the horns. Awful horns jutting up through their meat. There were a good half-dozen of them and they all growled deep in their throats. Something about that touched a nodal point deep in her brain, a throwback to the days when humans huddled in caves, staring out at the rainy darkness and the beasts that lurked within it.

A time of teeth and blood.

She backed up, aiming the rifle, as the dogs came for her and the pinkies stomped towards her, the floor trembling in their wake. As the first of the skinless dogs came through the door, gunning for her, a name for it slammed into her skull.

Hellhound.

If there was anything that ever needed that name, it was this fucking thing. She aimed and fired, plowing what passed for its brains right out of the back of its skull in a spray of dark gore as she nailed it dead on. As it dropped, two more slipped through to take its place, and the first pinky showed up, then promptly began forcing the door open wider so it could get through. She kept going, backing up slowly, forcing down her terror, letting the cold, detached control she'd mastered after years of combat take its place.

The next hellhound went down, its head splitting open with another well-placed burst from her rifle. Then the second one smashed to the floor, taking three more bullets into its open mouth. The pinky finished coming through and stomped over the remains of the dogs, awful squishing and snapping sounds filling the corridor. Kyra ignored it, pouring the remainder of the ammo in her magazine into the thing, trying to score as many potential killshots as possible because these big pink bastards were _hard_ to put down sometimes.

She got it with the last three rounds, nailing it one of its golden eyes and sending it smashing to the plate metal floor. She slapped a fresh magazine in and got back to work. The bottleneck and the long corridor really helped her out and by the end of it, the closest any one of them managed to get was within maybe six feet. Too close for comfort, but none of them had actually gotten close enough to attack her. What a goddamned relief it was to fight things that couldn't shoot back or return fire in any way!

She'd emptied her rifle in the process and now held her shotgun, ready for any stragglers. But it was dead silent again. Kyra crept forward, moving among the blood slicks and the piles of corpses, and came back to the Arboretum. It was indeed dead. The lights seemed to have come on a bit brighter, chasing away a lot of the shadows, and she saw nothing hiding along the peripheral of the Arboretum. The thorny roots had stopped twitching and writhing. They seemed dead now. This whole area did, in fact.

"Well that was easy," she muttered, then wondered if that was stupid. It felt like tossing up a challenge to the whole base.

Well...next stop was the Machine Shops.

She set off.

* * *

The closer she got to the Machine Shops, the more Kyra regretted her assessment of the previous situation, because it really did feel like Obsidian Station was saying, _Oh yeah? Wait til you see what I got next, bitch._

It sounded like a whole crew of technicians was in the shops, running all the machinery to its maximum capacity. As she drew closer to this wing of the structure, having to pass through another pair of vacant corridors and a security center, she heard whirling, banging, drilling, hammering, nailing, welding, and other sounds she couldn't readily identify. She prayed that the whole thing was just automated and someone had left it on accidentally, but she didn't really believe that. All she could think of was that the demonic things were putting their newfound human tech toys to good use, making themselves harder to kill.

What ungodly horror, what wretched terror culled from the deepest blackest abyssal pits of Hell itself awaited her this time around?

She was really thinking about maybe taking a break, because she still felt like shit, and now she was amped up on terror and adrenaline to boot. A bad combination. But no, she had to do this. She was here, now. She could take a break when the hearts were dead, when the threat was eliminated. Of course, she could also take a break if she died. The sounds only grew louder as she drew closer, and Kyra was forced to turn down her suit's auditory sensors. At last, she turned a corner and came to a lengthy corridor.

The walls were broken up by smashed-open doors every dozen or so meters. She counted six doors in total, three on each side. And...shit. Lo and behold, there was the heart, at the very end of the hallway maybe fifty or sixty meters away. She could just make it out, resting on a pedestal. She could take it out from here with the rifle, as she'd managed to find a single spare magazine and reload on the way to the Machine Shops, but…

She really wanted to see just what, precisely, was happening in those shops. She reasoned, as she stared at the nearest open door, that it would be a tactical advantage to know, but as she began walking slowly forward, she had to admit to herself that it was curiosity that won out. Creeping up to the edge of the door frame, she peered carefully around into it. Looking into the large room beyond, that extended away from her for a few dozen meters, Kyra saw it. She saw it all. She saw precisely what the demonic bastards were up to.

They were upgrading themselves.

A group of glowing-eyed, bloody former humans, all of them techs as far as she could tell, were working the machinery. This immediately jumped out at her, as this was clearly a new level of intelligence, but this was wiped away when one of the things being worked on somehow became aware of her presence and turned to face her.

It was a pinky, only a _lot_ different.

This thing was much more like a dog than the big shaved apes she'd been seeing so far. It was built like a bulldog on steroids, with a massive, bulky torso and enormous front legs that ended in fat paws studded with thick claws. A huge, eyeless skull that was almost all mouth, and of course it was stuffed full of razor teeth.

The skin was paler pink, and coming out of the back was…

"What in the fuck are you monsters doing?" she whispered in horror.

Sprouting from the back of the creature was an assemblage of machine parts, what almost looked like a spine with two wheels growing out the back, replacing its hiding legs. The thing opened its mouth and loosed a furious roar, and immediately several others took up the sound, freeing their own and creating a symphony of horror.

"Oh fucking hell," Kyra groaned.

She almost began to pull back, but something caught her eye. Well, it had worked before...Kyra took aim at a trio of airtanks not far from the new pinky's locations and fired off a three-round burst. The tanks popped right as she began retreating, knowing that if she didn't get another bottleneck, these things were going to overrun her and _fast_. Already there were more of them pouring out of the labs, a monstrous horde of nightmarish flesh and machine combinations. Before she finished getting back around the corner, she counted four of them, and there were probably more coming. More than four of these half-machine bastards!

She was going to have to be precise and fast as fuck.

There was just one mag left in her rifle, almost full, so that's where she started. Taking aim, giving herself room to retreat if she needed to, Kyra saw the first of the horrors come slamming around the corner. It roared as it...smelled her? Sensed her? It had no eyes, how did it know she was there? What difference did it make? Kyra aimed and fired, throwing as many small volleys of three-round bursts into the thing's mouth as she could, since that was its biggest, most obvious vulnerability. The monster came right at her, swallowing the lead in sprays of dark blood, and with just six bullets left in the gun, it snarled and went down.

By now, two more had appeared at the end of the hallway and she didn't like the way this was going. She fired off the rest of her rounds in the assault rifle and then let it hang by its shoulder strap. Immediately snatching up her shotgun, she aimed and pounded out a slug shell right into the gaping maw of another one of those big half-machine fuckers. That at least stopped it for a few seconds, which held up the other, as the hallway wasn't quite big enough for two of the big, burly things to walk shoulder-to-shoulder.

She hit it twice more, pumping the shotgun fast and hard, and that put it down as its head came apart in another spray of dark gore. But now the third one was free, and another was already coming around behind it. Kyra began backing up as she emptied the shotgun, blowing off a leg of the third monster and ripping away part of its big ugly skull in the process. Her back hit the wall as she finished shoving what remained of her shells in: just enough for a half-load, then she was down to her pistol and the goddamned ax.

Kyra hit the access button behind her to get the door open. It was time to create a better bottleneck. But there was an angry chime. Real, blind panic blasted into her and she smashed the button again, and again.

But the door had locked behind her.

Fighting for control, Kyra moved forward quickly as she aimed and fired, desperately trying to bring the fourth creature down as it came for her, snapping its jaws and roaring furiously, wheels spinning and spitting sparks behind it as they grinded against the metal flooring. She needed to recreate some of her fallback room, because fighting with your back against the wall was no way to fight, but she suddenly wasn't too confident about her chances of survival now. She flashed back to that room she'd gotten trapped in back in Hell.

She managed to put down the fourth ugly mechanized thing as her shotgun went dead, and she abandoned it as well, drawing her pistol. Had to be fast, had to be accurate. Aiming as best she could, trembling with adrenaline and terror, she emptied the magazine into the head and mouth of the fifth creature. It was definitely getting too close for comfort. Hastily reloading, she pumped more hot lead into the demonic entity, squeezing the trigger as fast as she could, her heart hammering painfully in her chest as it drew closer and closer.

Finally, as she emptied her second magazine, it went down.

As she reloaded, what seemed to be the final creature shoved past its dead brethren and came for her. Kyra screamed as it snapped its jaws at her, now within reaching distance. She backed up, finished reloading a second time, and began emptying rounds into the thing's face. It roared and pressed its attack, coming at her with a mindless, animalistic determination. Two shots went into its mouth. Another glanced off its big, bulky head.

Three shots into its mouth, four, five…

One went wild.

She put the rest of the rounds into its gaping maw, and then the gun clicked empty, her back hit the wall, and the thing was upon her. Pure, mindless reflex: she dropped the pistol and ripped the hatchet from her belt right as the thing clamped down its huge jaws on her armored leg. The pressure and pain hit her like a hammer as at least two of its teeth broke straight through the armor. She screamed again in rage and fury and agony and drove the blade down into its skull as hard as she possibly could. The thing roared and then bit down again as the blade bit deep into its cranium. But it wasn't enough. Knowing she had to do this now, she had to kill it before it killed her, Kyra ripped the ax out and chopped into the thing's head again.

And again. And again.

Blood flew. The beast roared. She screamed like a Valkyrie.

By the time she delivered the killing blow and finally chopped into whatever served it as a brain, her throat was raw and sore from screaming and she was losing blood from her wound. Gritting her teeth, grunting with effort, she freed herself from the dead mecha-pinky or whatever the fuck it was and then sat down in the corner, gasping for breath, shaking badly, gritting her teeth. She kept the ax raised, but she was alone now.

She stayed like that for she wasn't sure how long, huddled in the corner, eyes wide and staring, ax raised and dripping demon blood. It was the pain that finally pulled her out of her near trance-like state. A comforting blanket of what might have been shock settled over her, and her terror and anger drained away and she got to work. It took several minutes, but the work was calming. She removed the section of armor over her lower right leg, where it had gotten her, and cracked open the Medikit. Working slowly and methodically, she cleaned the wound, grimacing as the pain spiked from the antiseptics. Then she sealed up the wounds, gave herself the strongest antiviral injection she could find, and replaced the armor.

From there, she applied some suit repair kits, closed the Medikit back up, and got slowly to her feet. Replacing the kit in her pack, she recovered her ax and her pistol. She reloaded it and checked her ammo supply. It was very low. All she had left to her name were a pair of magazines for her sidearm. Sighing, she gripped the pistol and then set off. If she ran into anymore of those bastards, she'd probably be in a lot of trouble, but she had to complete a search of the area for more ammo and finish the job she'd come here to do.

Coming back into the main hallway, she heard some of the machines still running, and abruptly remembered that there had been zombies running this place. Shit. Why hadn't they joined the fray? More alert and cautious now, she moved closer to one of the openings and peered in. A few of the zombies were still manning the machines, but most of them were just wandering around. None of them seemed to be armed. Good and bad. Good, because she could likely afford to save on ammunition. Bad for the obvious lack of ammunition.

She holstered her pistol, loosed her hatchet, and set to work.

It was bloody, but easy, work. In the end, Kyra killed close to thirty of the zombie techs, and almost none of them fought back. She had no idea why. Maybe there was only enough room in their dead heads for one set of commands. So some were commanded to kill. Some were commanded to work machinery. Although the notion that they were still smart enough to work complex machinery was pretty fucking terrifying, so she killed them gladly. She did manage to find a few more magazines for her pistol, and was very grateful that her next stop was the Military HQ. There should, hopefully, be _some_ stockpile leftover there.

Emphasis on hopefully.

She shot the heart and waited for the worst, but it seemed that the worst had already come to pass. At least in this instance. With that gruesome task out of the way, she left the Machine Shops and began making her way to the Military HQ.

Two down, one to go.


	60. EPISODE 02: Shedding Some Light

"Oh my dear, sweet lord in Heaven, I accept this heavenly gift, and will use this big motherfucker to chew up and spit out all sorts of demon meat," Kyra said as she slowly lifted the huge, shiny, giant, fuck-off chromed killer she had just discovered.

This was easily the best thing that had happened to her since she'd woken up in that motherfucking escape pod who knew how long ago now. She'd made her way to the Military HQ after wasting the second hellbound heart, and it hadn't been easy. She'd been jumped by two pairs of fiends and a clutch of zombies that she'd emptied her pistol and again bloodied her hatchet dispatching. Again, she had that anxiety eating away at her: reduced once more to her hatchet. But as she'd come to stand before the entrance to the Military Headquarters, she'd finally worked up the nerve to open it up...and there it had been.

Almost like it was waiting for her.

The chaingun.

The United Nations Marine Corps issue DX-56 'Widowmaker' Chaingun. She hefted the big chromed beast and found that not only was it fully loaded, there was even one of its big yellow boxes of ammo nearby. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and she was sure it would soon enough, but for right now, this gift was enough to put a huge smile on her face. This was the first real, genuine, significant firepower she'd encountered since this whole mess began, and Kyra more than intended to put it to immediate use.

"Okay fuckers," she whispered as she looked around the entrance lobby to the HQ, "let's get this goddamned, motherfucking show on the road."

As she marched into the main antechamber of the headquarters, Obsidian Station obliged her willingly enough. The door to her right opened up and a clutch of shrieking fiends came scrabbling out, trying to all get to her at once. She turned the six-barreled gun on them, which she had already begun to spool up, and opened fire.

An unstoppable barrage of red hot lead sliced into them and began turning them into chewed up meat. Their shrieking took on a different quality, and it didn't last for a whole lot longer. Two managed to pop off fireballs, but one missed by a wide margin and the other just winged her armor. She shredded them and sprayed the walls, floor, ceiling, and everything else with their blood and pulped gore. Before she'd even finished, another door behind her opened up and she whirled around, now finding a group of hellhounds coming for her, their claws clacking madly on the floor. She emptied the rest of the big box of bullets in the chaingun taking them out, reducing them to nothing more than blood-soaked parts and pieces.

Limbs and guts and meat flew everywhere.

Kyra heard herself laughing with complete abandon as she sliced and diced the fuckers and some small, distant part of her worried that she might really be beginning to lose it. After a few seconds, she realized that the gun was empty and the smoking barrels were still churning. She released the trigger and hit the eject button. The big yellow box clattered to the floor and she began the process of reloading it. Thankfully, there was nothing else coming for her right away, although she could definitely hear more sounds coming from elsewhere.

She'd stirred up the hornet's nest.

Good. Fine.

She finally had a goddamned can of Raid for them.

Kyra finished reloading and hit the barracks first, where the fiends had come from. They were a bloody, wrecked mess. The place looked like a feeding ground, with chewed bones and piles of stinking meat scattered across the floor. Men and women hung from the ceiling, bound by chains with hooks through their shoulders. Some were almost whole, some were little more than shoulders, a bit of chest, and a head, with stringy bits of skin hanging down from them. The sight didn't turn her stomach, it just boiled her blood and filled her with rage. She cleared the area, finding nothing else lurking in that section, and headed for the next place, which turned out to be a mess hall that was in just as bad of shape as everywhere else.

Some zombies hung around, and they were all armed. Some semblance of sanity came to her and she didn't waste the chaingun on them, instead putting them down by popping shots into their skulls as they returned fire. All of them did that, and two of them connected with her armor. Smarter, they were definitely getting smarter.

Big, bad sign.

But later, she'd worry about that later. Or never, hopefully, if she killed them all. Couldn't be smart zombies if they were all dead. She swept through the mess with a brutal efficiency and moved on to the next section of the HQ, passing down a long hallway of bloodied, dented metal and flickering or shattered screens. As she came into another antechamber, she began to see the changes being wrought by the hellbound heart. One wall had largely become ugly green brickwork with iron windows set into it. The floor had simply collapsed in one corner and was now a puddle of bubbling toxic green glop. More rusty hooks hung from chains embedded in the ceiling. An enormous goat skull with huge, curved horns was mounted in the center of the room on a titanium pedestal, its empty sockets glowing a malignant red.

More of those weird red pots lined the walls, and torches made of human arms were mounted here and there. The area was empty for the moment, so she moved over to a security station and got behind the desk, hunting for info and ammo. She didn't find either. All she got for her troubles were more bleeding screens with burning pentagrams featured prominently. She ignored it and looked at her options, as all the doors in the area were at least labeled. Two to her right, one of which led to an armory, the other leading to the CO's office. Dead ahead led to the control area. Left were bathrooms and a break room.

She made a beeline for the armory.

It was, of course, locked up tight, and unless she had patience and tools, she wasn't getting in without a security keycard. And, of course, the CO's office was locked as well. Trying to ignore her rising anger and the horrible place around her, Kyra decided to do a standard sweep of the area. She found another pair of fiends in the bathrooms that she put down with shotgun blasts, and a few zombies lurking in the lounge. Pretty standard fare at this point. As she hunted around for a security keycard, Kyra thought that that was interesting.

It was crazy what you could get used to.

No security card, just a few more shotgun shells and a magazine for her assault rifle at least, but nothing else very substantial. At last, she came to the final door and opened it up. Here was the control area for the HQ. It was a very ugly place. Once, it had been a vaguely circular room, built around a raised control desk from where, no doubt, the CO of this place sat and lorded over his techs and flunkies. Workstations and terminals ringed the outer wall, with an open space for foot traffic in between the two areas.

Now, the place was a wretched, reeking mess.

Humans remains were scattered across the blood-soaked carpet. Across from her, on the far wall, she saw three people crucified to metal beams that had been welded together. They were hung upside down and metal rivets meant for hull repair had been driven through their wrists and ankles. Their guts had been sliced open and their intestines hung out of them like dead snakes. Vaguely human skulls and outright otherworldly ones had been arranged all over the place, serving as sources of light, as their sockets glowed that eerie red. One wall was replaced with a strangely rocky material, the uneven surface a deep bluish-black in color.

She saw the heart in the middle of the raised dais, in plain view.

Last one. She wanted to get it out of the way quickly, while there was nothing in the room, as far as she could tell. There might be a few hiding places, but she doubted anything particularly threatening was lurking around, if anything at all. The place actually felt empty. Well, now or never. Raising her pistol, she aimed and fired.

It was good. The bullet punched through the heart, and the uncomfortable feeling that she'd already began to associated with the hearts was beginning to dissipate. And nothing was coming. As Kyra began to leave the room, something changed. That feeling of tension and despair stopped ebbing and began to swell once more. In fact, she began to feel a strange sensation, almost like an electric charge building on the air before a lightning strike that was somehow getting through her suit. The lights began to dim and the shadows grew.

The light wasn't dimming, she realized as she looked around, switching to her shotgun, it was...gathering. Focusing. In three points in the control room: one dead ahead, one to either side. They were circles of red light on the floor, and, she realized with a growing horror as the sensation of something coming, something's imminent arrival grew, they were pentagrams. Definitely a pretty bad sign. Especially when they began to pulse and the energy on the air grew even more powerful. Something was _definitely_ coming.

Kyra kept her shotgun leveled at the central pentagram.

There was a flash of red-yellow light, and when it was gone, something had appeared in its place. A fiend! It had appeared out of thin air! Teleported! Kyra squeezed the trigger and the shotgun jerked in her hands. The thing's head was blown clean off, but two others had appeared alongside it. They weren't disoriented at all and wasted no time in hurling fireballs at her. One of them slammed into her chest and she grunted, stumbling back, feeling the powerful heat. A second winged her right arm. She turned and pounded out another shell, blasting a fist-sized hole into its chest. The final one leaped at her and bashed the shotgun aside.

It went clattering to the floor and the beast went for her throat, wrapping its big hands around it. Panic set in and Kyra's own hands shot up. She gripped the thing's misshapen skull and dug her thumbs into its eyes. They popped in sprays of dark red gore and it released her, shrieking wildly as it flung her away. Kyra hit the ground with a pained grunt, but she was ready, pulling out her pistol and putting three rounds through its face as it stumbled around. When it died, she laid there for several seconds, getting her breath back, but mostly just staring in shock. They could teleport! How?! Was it a natural ability?

Or were they _being_ teleported somehow by someone?

Finally, after admitting to herself that she might never get the answer, or even if she did, it certainly wouldn't arrive with her sitting on the floor, Kyra picked herself up. She holstered her pistol and retrieved her shotgun, then began the long trek towards Command Control.

* * *

Kyra hammered on the door and stared into the camera overhead. It was on, she could tell, the little light blinking green.

"Let me in, asshole," she said into the radio.

" _Hold on,"_ came the distracted reply.

Another few seconds, then the door opened up. She slipped in and it snapped closed behind her, resealing tightly. She looked around Command Control. It looked a bit more impressive this time around at least, compared to Typhon. There was a small corridor that she was in, with security checkpoints to either side. Beyond that was another area crammed with workstations and terminals and chairs and desks. This place hadn't been hit terribly hard, and it was obvious that there had been a cleanup effort. At the back of the room was a small raised section that led to a glass-walled secondary area where she could see the good doctor working diligently.

He seemed like he'd sealed himself in.

"All right, Jensen, I want it," she said, marching across the room, up the few stairs, and onto the platform outside of the glass wall.

Beyond, he stood facing away from her, typing away at a terminal at one of the desks inside. There were stacks of PDAs around him, as well as a healthy supply of guns, ammo, medical supplies, tech parts, and food and water situated on other desks.

" _What?"_ he asked.

"Dirt. All the information on this goddamned stupid corporation we work for. Tell me everything you know," Kyra said.

He stopped working and sighed heavily. Turning around, he grabbed one of the PDAs and walked over to the glass wall. His voice came from a speaker mounted nearby. _"I'm afraid you likely know most of it. But I can tell you a few things. I've been working here for a year, and I've been with the UAC for twenty. I know for a fact we've broken several international laws. We've experiment on convicts for medical breakthroughs and testing out new military poisons and biological warfare. I know we've been involved in a few assassinations. As for our work here? Well, by the time I had arrived, they had already discovered teleportation technology and had been making expeditions into the other dimension for a few months. Possibly longer, it was hard to tell. I know that they started with drones, and upgraded to manned expeditions as fast as they could, and began building outposts in the other dimension, or re-purposing existing structures."_

"What was their goal?" Kyra asked.

" _At first? Simply exploration and information gathering. Of course they had aspirations even from the beginning, but the place was so vast and alien that it took them quite awhile to get even the basics down."_

"How long until they realized they weren't alone?"

" _Awhile, at least from this outpost. I honestly don't know. I've heard rumors and come across a report or two that indicates that other places had teleportation pads of their own, and had their own unique experiences. Even with unlimited access to all of Obsidian Station's databases, I still only know so much, as a lot was lost in the fighting. I know at least that there were attacks about a year ago. It happened just a few weeks after I had started. Since I was already fairly high up in their corporation and I had been trusted with a number of highly illegal experiments, I was brought into their 'inner circle' quickly."_

"You're a sick fuck, you know that?"

He sighed softly. _"Yes. I know. I sold my soul a long time ago. I won't bother trying to justify myself, because now it doesn't matter. Just know that I had my reasons and it wasn't blind greed that drove me."_

She shook her head, fighting her anger. "So what were you, then?"

" _A chemist, among other things. They had me studying material brought back from the other dimension, as well as the bodies they began recovering of the imps."_

"Imps?"

" _That's what they call the ones that can throw fire."_

"Okay. Did they figure _anything_ out about the other dimension? Why are there structures there? Who built them? How old are they?"

" _It varies, oddly. And the dimension itself is vast. There are whole different regions. Thousands upon thousands of miles. Some of those structures are a thousand years old. Some are ninety thousand. Some are older than that. Besides some basics, we have no idea how that place works. Even today it's one giant mystery..."_

"Okay, so what _happened_ here?" she pressed.

" _A few days ago the teleportation devices activated by themselves at both here and Typhon Station. We were trying to figure out why when the demons began pouring through. There were dozens, hundreds of them. The skulls flew out and immediately began infesting people, possessing them. There was a lot of fighting, but there was a lot of death in the very beginning. I'd say easily over half the population of the station was wiped out within an hour. It was a slaughter. A nightmare. We tried to escape, but the ships that were here were destroyed in an explosion. A few last stands were made around the base and they all failed. Eventually, I was the only one left."_ He sighed. The man looked dead on his feet.

"Is this happening elsewhere?" Kyra asked.

" _I can't know for sure but I'm almost positive it must be. I wouldn't be surprised if the lunar outpost has been hit, or our Mars bases. And elsewhere. God...these things...I don't know if the UAC has portals on Earth, but I wouldn't put it past them at all."_

"No, of course not," Kyra muttered.

He frowned and then opened up a mini-airlock in front of him. He placed the PDA in it and cycled it through. _"Everything I can offer is in there. A map of the station, the highest clearance available, as well as every scrap of data I could piece together, including some absolutely crucial information. If the worst has happened and we're looking at a full-scale invasion of Earth, we're going to need every concealable edge over them. Contained within is detailed information on how to properly calibrate the teleportation devices so that everything we put through goes through. We're going to need that,"_ he explained.

"So the portal I'll need to take will work?"

" _Just hook the PDA into it and it will properly calibrate it. Do not lose that PDA. It must get to the right authorities. Whatever beliefs I held, whatever oaths I swore, whatever secrets I promised to keep to my dying breath...none of that matters any longer. The existence of that place and these things overrides all of that. We could very well be looking at the end of the human race, and worse,"_ he said gravely.

"Worse?"

" _If there are other species out there, aliens sharing our galaxy, then we have potentially unleashed a terror from another dimension that could spread everywhere. And who knows what they're capable of? What if they really are demons? This could get much, much worse..."_

"Exactly what I needed to hear," Kyra growled as she looked over the PDA. "This will get me into that armory? And the CO's office?" she asked, looking back up.

" _Yes."_

"Fine then. I'm going back there to stock up, then I'm taking the tram to the other building and teleporting out of here. What are you going to do?"

" _Stay here and try to survive. I know you must hate me. Loathe me even. You would gladly kill me, I imagine. But that doesn't matter any longer. The survival of the entire species may be on the line. If you do make it to safety, and it is as bad as I fear, then you must send someone to get me."_

"Why should I bother?"

" _Great wars are not only won by great fighters, but great thinkers, as well. You are going to need scientists, engineers, doctors...I am a genius. That is not arrogance, I am stating a fact. I can't promise to turn the tide of the war, but I have no interest in letting humanity die. I will continue working while I am here surviving, and if rescued and brought into the war effort, then I will do everything I can to wipe them out. Even if we aren't looking at an apocalypse scenario and it was contained to a few isolated incidents, I will gladly turn over all information on the UAC. They have gone too far for too long. They must be stopped or they're going to kill us all eventually."_

"Might be a little too late for that, but I'll put it on my to-do list, doc," Kyra said as she pocketed the PDA.

" _I would appreciate it."_

Kyra left him in Command Control.


	61. EPISODE 02: Once More into the Maw

The tunnel that led to the final place Kyra intended to visit in this miserable hellhole was thankfully intact, and the tram rode smoothly enough across the tracks. Though it ran over a few corpses with ugly snaps and sprays of blood. She ignored it all, checking over the chaingun to make sure it was in top condition. She had no idea what might be waiting for her in the final structure: Site Echo. The second teleportation site.

As she finished making sure the chaingun was up to snuff, she set it aside and then looked over her latest toy, the primary item she had liberated from the locked armory. It was beautiful, somehow even more wonderful a sight than the chaingun had been. She had absolutely no idea what a DX-88 Eliminator Rocket Launcher was doing on a UAC moon-based research station, but honestly, she didn't give a single fuck.

What mattered was that she had a fucking rocket launcher.

And three rockets to go with it.

She'd also managed to find another few boxes of bullets for the chaingun, a stack of ammo for the assault rifle, and a box of shotgun shells. It was quite the haul, and this time she actually felt ready to fight through hell. Well, probably as much as she could, given the reality of the situation. The launcher looked to be in good condition. Of course the only real test was to pull trigger, which she couldn't really do. She planned on saving it for a real emergency, which...she supposed she'd know when she saw it.

Given everything she'd run into so far, especially considering what had happened in the machine shops, Kyra was prepared to see something a hell of a lot worse than the nightmarish horrors she'd run into so far. And having a rocket launcher to blast right into their screaming faces was a pretty great thing to have. Plus, she could use the chaingun until then. Kyra looked up. The tram was coming to a halt and the airlock was very close now. She stood up and began settling all of her gear. She was pretty much at her limit now.

The airlock finished its cycle and granted her access to the structure.

There were zombies waiting for her on the disembarkation platform. They were armed, and almost all of them were former Marines. Shit. This wasn't going to be easy. She was now more than grateful for the suit of power armor, because she probably wouldn't be able to carry five damned weapons at once without it, especially considering the chaingun. She let it hang across her back and selected the assault rifle.

The second the tram doors opened up, the three nearest zombies opened fire. Almost none of them were armored, at least. It was just a matter of point and shoot. Kyra took a few pistol rounds as she lined up the zombie's skulls and squeezed the trigger, letting out one round apiece and making a kill-shot each time. As the nearest three zombie bastards went down, others swarmed in. One of them had a shotgun. Kyra took cover and began to operate a bit more tactically. She set to work, wearing out the enemies numbers.

By the time she'd emptied her assault rifle, the last of the zombies was put down, as well as a pair of fiends that had shown up at some point during the firefight. She hastily reloaded and waited to see what else would come her way, but the local forces seemed to be depleted for the moment. Kyra left the relative safety of the tram and stepped out onto the platform. Still nothing around. She didn't expect that to keep.

She spent a few minutes checking the corpses, gathering up some more shells and magazines for her pistol, finding nothing else of note. Though if there had been, maybe she might not be here to complain about it. After clearing the area, she passed through the security checkpoint that had been utterly wrecked by the invasion. The walls were painted in blood and corpses littered the area. There were, at least, corpses from both sides. Though it looked like something had been feeding on a lot of them. Kyra moved among them, grabbing whatever ammo she could find. Passing through the security checkpoint, she came to the crossroads. It was a pretty similar setup as the previous structure, with scientist's dormitories to the right, and a practically bombed-out security center to the left, and the teleportation core dead ahead.

She opted to go straight to the core.

The sooner she could get through this mess, the better. She hit the access button and scoped out the room beyond. It was similarly designed to the others she'd seen so far. The teleportation gateway was still intact, though it was powered down. She moved slowly along the peripheral of the room, checking for any would be assassins hidden among the shadows and workstations, which were almost wholly destroyed. There were a lot of bodies here, several of them ripped and torn apart, blood sprayed across everywhere, spent shell casings carpeting the floor. Hundreds of rounds had been fired off in this room, she realized.

Kyra tried to imagine what it must have been like to be here at ground zero when they came shrieking and slobbering and cascading out of the gateway. When the forces of Hell began ripping into them with teeth and claw, eating men and women alive. What must it have been like to watch everyone around you getting pieced and chopped and sliced to bloody ribbons? Had they known what was coming? Had any of them been in on it? Or had they merely suspected? Had they had no idea at all? She imagined that the money men at the top wanted everyone kept in the dark as much as absolutely possible.

Didn't they always?

Sometimes she thought she hated them the most. Not the brains who obsessed over all the perverse, dangerous, or outright insane doors science could unlock. Not the shady muscle who made it happen. Not the brass or the politicians who were drooling over the possibilities of increased power over their given domains.

No, the money men.

The slick, sick bastards with dead eyes and fake smiles and faker tans who looked at these atrocities, these horrors being committed, and saw nothing more than dollar signs. And why? More than one billionaire had admitted that the only reason they continued accumulating wealth far, _far_ beyond the threshold of money that any single person or family could _ever_ need was simply to 'keep score'. Were the ultra-rich even remotely human any longer? She had the idea that money was like a toxin, sapping things like empathy and compassion and trust, eroding them until they were gone, and all that was left, like a dark aperture, was the raw, hungry need to consume more and more currency at the expense of literally everything else.

She had the idea that the men at the top of the UAC were the mega-rich, and had looked into a LITERAL FUCKING GATEWAY TO HELL, and all they saw was a way to get more money. That was all they saw.

Kyra tried to reign in her cold fury and focused. After finishing up her search and securing the area, she walked over to the workstation attached to the gateway and fired it up. The workstation turned on, but it only took her a few minutes to determine that she might be fucked. A sign flashed across the cracked screen.

 **INSUFFICIENT POWER TO ACTIVATE GATEWAY.**

"Oh come on," Kyra whispered. She reactivated her comms unit. "Doc!"

A pause. _"Yes, Staff Sergeant?"_

"There's not enough power to get this damned thing turned on. What's the quickest way to rectify this particular fuck-up?"

" _Um...hold on."_ Another pause. _"Okay, I'm uploading something to your suit's database. It's an update for your map. It looks like you need to reroute two junctions and then activate an emergency generator."_

"Fine. Thanks."

" _Indeed."_

She severed the link and checked her map. It became superimposed over her HUD again, partially obscuring the room beyond. One of the relays was in the room, and rerouting it was a relatively simple procedure. Another was over in the scientist's dormitories complex. And, of course, the emergency generator was in an underground portion beneath the main lab.

"Great..." she muttered quietly.

Definitely saving that one for last.

Well, since the first power relay was closest, she tracked it down, finding it tucked away in a little alcove. The procedure was pretty simple. Just push a few buttons, flip a few switches, then pull a lever. There was a hum of power and that was it. Definitely a lot easier than mounting an assault on a roomful of goddamned fiends or pinkies. She didn't like leaving the relative safety of the teleportation core. Though she knew it might not last, given the fact that they could fucking _teleport_ now. But the sooner she got this over with, the better.

Not that she was sure how long it was apt to go on.

She left the teleportation lab and returned to the antechamber. Something shifted overhead. She jerked back and raised her shotgun just in time to blow the head clean off of a fiend that was preparing to jump her from an overhead ventilation shaft. Its brains rained down all over her suit and she groaned and wiped at her visor, ultimately having to take out a cleaning rag and wipe it off. What she wouldn't give for a good set of wipers. She settled on the shotgun as she made her way slowly into the dormitory complex.

Definitely a bad place to be: there was almost no power in the network of bloody corridors. And she heard zombies groaning and shuffling nearby. And she had to assume that they were armed. With a soft sigh, Kyra hit the light-amp function in her suit and set to work. It wasn't perfect, as it turned everything an ugly green color, but at least she could make out basically what was happening in front of her. She turned a corner, following the route she'd memorized, and blew a hole in the chest of a zombified technician.

It roared and died, coagulated blood spraying the walls.

She cocked the shotgun and walked on.

Could it really be as bad as she was fearing? As bad as Jensen made it out to possibly be? Before today, Kyra thought that she wouldn't truly think it possible. She thought she had a pretty decent handle on what could and couldn't happen. And even adhering to the axiom of expecting the unexpected, Kyra knew that her worldview had been shattered by the discovery of basically a gateway to Hell itself. She still didn't know if she really believed that place was Hell, or just some alternate dimension that resembled it.

Although those pentagrams were pretty suggestive.

Either way, did it really matter? Because at the very least it was obvious that it wasn't biblical Hell. You couldn't kill actual demons, and even if you could, it should've been a lot harder than a well-placed shotgun shell. No, it was much more likely that these things just resembled demons. But they _could_ be killed, and she was uniquely equipped to deal with this threat. Besides having a big arsenal, she was highly adaptable and had been through years of combat experience, dozens of battles all over Earth.

She could fight this war for a long time if she had to.

But what if they actually were invading Earth?

If that were the case, then she had to get back to Earth as fast as possible. She was going to fight like hell if these ugly motherfuckers were crawling all over terra firma. Kyra aimed and popped off another shot, blowing the head clean off another zombie, then almost decapitating a second one as it stepped out and she put a shell through its neck. Glancing at the fresh corpses in passing, she shuddered to think of them roaming the streets of a city.

What a fucking nightmare of an apocalypse that would be.

The problem was that after today, she no longer felt certain of her reality. Anything now felt possible, no matter how awful, how insane. She wasn't sure how to handle that. There it was, the power relay she needed to activate. _Well,_ she thought as she worked, _I'll deal with it the same way I've dealt with everything else._

Just keep going and try not to think about it.

There didn't seem to be much in the way of alternative options, and those few that were available all seemed worse.

After activating the relay and shunting power to the teleportation core, she quickly began making her way back out of the dormitories complex. That was two down, one more thing to do. And, of course, it was in the basement. In a way, it was stupid. It wasn't like going one level down actually changed much of anything. It was an atmospherically sealed base on a distant moon. The lower level was functionally the same. If it was any more dangerous, it wasn't because she had descended ten feet. And yet…

Basements still freaked her out.

What a stupid thing to be afraid of after all this shit.

She returned to the gateway room and tracked down the stairwell that would grant her access to the beneath. Opening the door, which was tucked away at the end of an alcove stuffed full of screens and readouts and keyboards, she stared down the dimly lit passageway. After lingering for several seconds, Kyra topped her shotgun off and forced herself down the stairs. The path to the emergency generator was a simple one, as simple as could be, actually. Dead straight ahead. All she had to do was walk down ten meters of corridor, activate it, then walk back and she'd be done. Easy. Except she wasn't so sure about how easy it could be.

As she came to the end of the stairwell, she felt like something was down there with her. After waiting for a few seconds, trying to scope the situation out, Kyra began to move forward. There were offshoot alcoves to either side of her every couple of meters. It was even darker down in those, a perfect ambush spot. She moved a little forward, as her light-amp only pushed back the darkness so far for some reason down here, and saw nothing. The alcove ended a few meters in, the walls studded with all manner of technology.

She felt almost certain something should be in there. But there was nothing. Sighing softly, lowering her shotgun, she moved on to the next one and checked it out. A blank space mocked her here, too. Kyra kept going, slowly picking up speed. Each alcove revealed nothing, and yet that feeling of not being alone, that pervasive notion that something was watching her, here with her in the subterranean part of the complex, not only did not abate, but strengthened. By now, she could see the small room holding the generator.

Pushing forward, figuring that she was at least halfway done now, she entered the room and cleared it. Yet still nothing. Following the basic instructions that came tagged with the update to the map overlay on her HUD, Kyra activated the generator. It kicked to life in a welcome hum of power and all around her, the lights turned up a bit brighter. Though not as much as she would have liked. Grabbing her shotgun again, she left the small room and returned to the corridor. Now all she had to do was walk back and-

A heavy footfall sounded somewhere nearby.

It was very close to that of the pinkies. Kyra whirled to the right, shotgun ready, finger on the trigger. Another footfall, another. It was getting closer, coming out of the nearest alcove. She prepared herself, ready to blast the thing back to where it had come from, but then something deeply frightening happened. She had pretty good hearing, and could judge the exact second the thing should have broken the threshold of exiting the alcove and entering the main corridor, the precise moment when it should have entered her field of vision.

But she saw nothing.

And yet the footsteps persisted, now very obvious, and drawing closer.

Was she going insane? Was this what madness felt like?

No, there was _something_ there, she could feel it! Kyra aimed to the best of her ability and squeezed the trigger. And heard a roar! A spray of blood burst into existence! Was it a fucking _ghost_?! She pumped the shotgun and fired again as the footsteps picked up once more. A second spray of blood, and then the heavy, meaty smack of something hitting the floor. Whatever it was, she still couldn't see it. Kyra began to move forward, wanting to get a closer look at this thing, or _any_ look at it, but then she started to hear more footfalls.

"Shit," she whispered.

There were more of them, and they were coming towards her. Almost without thinking about it, she sprinted away, back the way she'd come, and heard one of them roar. It sounded exactly like a pinky. Were they invisible now?! Is that what it is!? How?! No time to think about that. She made it to the stairwell in record time and kept going until she was back up on the first floor. She closed the door and locked it behind her, then moved away, back to the main teleportation room. They didn't seem interested in or maybe capable of following her, at least.

So now she had to contend with ghosts.

Great.

More paranoid than ever, Kyra moved over to the main console and fired it up. This time when she tried to engage the gateway, it turned on. She breathed a slow sigh of relief and scanned the PDA. It began the process of linking up to...The Acid Prison. Oh what a fucking fantastic name! But that was what the PDA said. And apparently getting through that place would take her to somewhere called The Blood Labyrinth.

"What kind of asshole named these places?!" she snapped.

But getting through there would apparently take her to a teleportation device that would finally grant her access to the lunar outpost. Why she couldn't just teleport from here, she had no idea. Despite how she felt about Jensen and all of his ilk, she did believe him. At least in regards to the notion that he wanted to help humanity, to help stop this madness. So if this was the route he was presenting her, it must be the shortest one between here and there. Now, it was up to her to get through Hell one more time and figure out just how fucked they all really were.

The gateway finished doing its awful thing, gathering the dark energy necessary to make such a wretched trip possible, and Kyra took the opportunity to check herself over once more. She _really_ didn't want to go back into that awful place. But she had no other choice. And this time, at least, she _should_ be coming through with all her gear intact. She finished her check, finding her gear adequate, weapons ready.

Forcing herself up onto the platform, Kyra stared into the seething black abyss and, hesitating for just a few seconds, stepped into it.


	62. EPISODE 02: Unruly Evil

This time, the whole process of teleporting to Hell went a lot more smoothly.

Kyra thought, as she appeared on a platform in the middle of a small room with ugly green-brown walls, that if those involved had had to endure what she had during her first transition, maybe they wouldn't be so fucking eager to continue their research. Then again, this was the UAC she was talking about. It's not as if the fuckers pulling the strings would ever have to endure that crap. No, it was far easier to keep the war going when you never had to step within a hundred miles of an actual battlefield and your job was to make battle strategies.

Fucking jackoffs.

Getting her bearings, Kyra checked the perimeter of the room she was in. Though there wasn't much to see. Beyond the basic platform she'd appeared on, there were just the walls and floor and ceiling, a medieval style wooden and iron door dead ahead of her, and a still somewhat intact workstation to her right. Thick black cabling ran from the workstation to the teleportation platform, which was a black metal pedestal beneath her feet. As soon as she was sure that she was truly alone, (or as alone as she could get, now knowing that the inhuman bastards could teleport), Kyra took the opportunity to recheck her gear.

She found that Jensen wasn't bullshitting. Everything was still where she'd left it and fully functional as far as she could tell. Although the only real test that mattered was pulling the trigger. Kyra looked at the door ahead of her. She should probably get those tests out of the way sooner rather than later. She took a moment to investigate the workstation, but it didn't hold anything of any value, so she moved over to the door. Another one of those big red buttons inset into a silver plate was embedded in the wall to the right of the door.

She hit it and the door slid up into the ceiling.

The time to perform some crucial tests on her weaponry immediately came upon her as the door revealed a decent-sized room beyond. She took it in with a sweep of her gaze as the barrel of her shotgun already began seeking targets. A pair of fiends were crouched in the dead center of the room, maybe ten feet ahead of her, feasting on the corpse of a technician. Behind them and to the left was a second story with iron bars for walls and more fiends on patrol, or maybe just milling around. She popped the head of the first feasting ugly and sprayed its partner with gore, which caused it to snarl out a shriek and hurl a fireball her way.

It smacked her in the chest and sent her stumbling back, but Kyra quickly readjusted her aim and blew off its right arm as the slug shell connected with its shoulder with all the force of a cannonball. The thing shrieked madly as it fell to the stonework floor, flopping violently as it sprayed deep red blood everywhere. She ignored it and turned the shotgun on those above her, which were already trying to pelt her with fireballs, throwing them wildly between the iron bars. As she took a step out and readjusted her aim, she heard a warning snort from her right, and another from her left. Pinkies. Except she hadn't seen anything.

She glanced to her right as she fired and realized that it was more of the invisible bastards. Cursing, though glad that her aim was true even though she was distracted and another fiend went down with a fist-sized hole in its stomach, she pulled back into the previous room. Stomping footfalls signaled the approached of the ghosts and this time with the better light, (there were a lot more of those arm-torches burning that weird green fire on the walls and she'd caught sight of a skylight overhead), she could actually _see_ something this time!

She saw a strange kind of shimmering effect, almost like heat waves that you could catch sight of if you looked at an open flame or a baking blacktop in the hot summer sun. She aimed and fired and was rewarded with a roar of pain and a spray of blood. She repeated the action and one of them went down with a meaty thud. Kyra turned and emptied her shotgun into the second one, putting it down as well. She waited, hearing only the annoyed hissing of the surviving fiends on the second story, and finally swapped to her assault rifle and stepped back out. Apparently that was it. Dodging the fireballs, she put down the remaining fiends and finished securing the area. Not a bad test of her armory, all things considered.

Plus, not a bad reentry into fucking Hell itself.

Kyra took a moment to search the area. There wasn't a whole lot around. Besides the one lonely corpse in the middle of the room that had clearly been there for awhile, which had nothing, there was one other body and a few crates tucked away in a darker room accessible through a rectangular hole in the wall in the upper right corner. The crates had nothing of use and the second body, some poor Marine bastard, had only a single spare magazine for the rifle, which she salvaged. She took the opportunity to feed another eight shells into her shotgun and decided to stick with the rifle for now. Kyra came back into the central room and looked up.

That skylight really freaked her out. Overhead, she saw nothing but a square of burning orange-red skies. Man, this place truly was a nightmare. Tearing her eyes away from the sky, she scanned the room one more time. For a few seconds, she was stymied. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go. Her eyes were drawn to that fenced-in second story. Blood was dripping down the green-brown wall from the dead fiends, but there didn't seem to be any way to get up there. Then she noticed that one section of the wall ahead of her was different from the rest. It was what looked like a collection of iron girders welded together.

Then she noticed a button on the wall beside that and walked up to it. Pressing it, she jumped back slightly as that iron girder section of the wall lowered into the floor. It was a lift, she realized, and stepped aboard it just in time before it went back to its original position. Her stomach rolled a bit at the rapid ascent, but otherwise nothing bad happened. Dead ahead of her was another medieval door with another red button, but she left that alone for the moment. To the right was just a dead drop back into the previous level.

To the left was the entirety of the second story, which was really just an L-shaped corridor. She moved slowly down it, pausing to look out of what served as a window in the form of three more of those weird iron girders set into the wall with about six inches of space in between them, and saw an outdoors courtyard. More sounds came to her: the groaning of zombies, that weird gurgling sound that had to come from the fiends. Ignoring that for the moment, she finished her sweep of the second story and found nothing more.

Eager to get this over with, and to kill some more monsters, she returned to the door and opened it up. More of that bloody light spilled in as she stepped out into the courtyard. There was a little raised area directly in front of her, kind of like a porch, if the porch were made of patchwork, flat gray stones. Broad stairs led down to the courtyard proper ahead of her. As she looked at a pool in the exact center of it, she was reminded of the UAC's name for this place: Acid Prison. She supposed there were enough bars around here, and that was definitely a pool of acid. And there was another pool of acid off to her right, in the corner.

In fact, all but one of the corners had drop-offs into pools of bubbling green acid. From where she was standing, she couldn't see any hostiles, but she could definitely hear them. One was to her right, so she decided to investigate. Couldn't have enemies that she couldn't quite see hanging around. As she edged closer to the drop-off into the pool of acid, she finally saw it: there was a corridor down there missing one of its walls, and there were a trio of fiends lurking. One of them saw her and shrieked a warning to the others.

She rewarded it with a three-round burst right in its fucking face.

The others began hurling fireballs at her and she sidestepped while firing, putting them down as well. This was going pretty great so far. Having the high ground was awesome. She killed one more that came out from an opening in the left side of the open-faced corridor, from where it gained its missing wall, becoming a proper hallway. Once they were put down, she finished checking out the courtyard.

The most obvious exit was a smaller version of the wood-and-iron door, but it had a red trim to it. Well, a red trim of...skulls, actually, embedded in the wall around it. They were hideous and disconcerting. There was a small dark slot in the wall next to the door. Keycard, she realized. Or, well, if it was like the other time: skull-key. Great. Kyra continued looking around, and quickly surmised that she was going to have to do something she really didn't want to do: make a jump across the acid. Or probably _into_ the acid.

The ceiling of the open-faced corridor was almost the same height as the ground she was standing on. The pool was maybe six feet wide. She _might_ be able to make the jump, but she'd also have to calculate for the drop rate as well, so she didn't just jump face-first into the wall. She looked at it for a few more seconds, then decided to look around the area one more time to see if she missed something. But no, she didn't see any way down there beyond jumping. Maybe there was a way in beyond the red skull door?

But she didn't have the skull-key, and she needed to progress, so Kyra returned to the ledge, judged it best she could, then ran and jumped. She scraped the top of her helmet on the edge of the ceiling, but just barely managed to land on the very edge of the platform below. As she did, something groaned and a bullet slammed into her armor. She let out a short shout of frustration and as soon as she was stable, twisted around, snatched up her shotgun, and put a slug shell through the head of the zombie that had attacked her.

She pumped the shotgun and fired again, mostly decapitating a second former human behind the first. Nothing else showed up or made noise. Sighing softly in relief, she started hunting around for anything useful. The corridor extended ahead of her, becoming open-faced again after a dozen feet and showing her the second acid pool in the area. Between the two of them, the zombies had a spare mag for her sidearm and a few shotgun shells, not much else to write home about. The corridor terminated in a left-hand turn where she found a few more corpses, another doorway, and a pair of buttons dead ahead.

The doorway, to her right, was all wooden and adorned with an absolutely horrifying...sculpture? She didn't know what the fuck it was beyond a collection of skulls. Some were human, some looked like they belonged to fiends maybe. They were arranged in a pile, all of them embedded in the wooden door, and at the top of the pile was a much larger skull with two big horns curling out of the sides. What in the fuck had _that_ been? She hadn't seen anything like that. Fuck, she hoped she wouldn't run into it.

Kyra spied a button next to the door and hit it. It slid up into the ceiling like the others, revealing...a large room where the floor was covered in acid. There were rows of rectangular platforms sticking out of the acid, rising about ten feet into the air.

She stared into that room for several long seconds. "You know what?" she murmured quietly, reaching out and hitting the button. "Fuck that room."

The door closed and she turned away from it.

Moving over to the other two buttons, Kyra stared at them for a moment, then reached out and hit the right button. There was a loud click, and somewhere overhead, she heard something open up. After nothing else happened, she hesitantly reached out and hit the second button. Whirling around as a section of wall to her immediate left opened up, she sighed heavily, realizing what it was: another lift. She stepped aboard and rode it up, finding herself back in the courtyard opposite where she'd first entered it through.

"You fucking assholes," she muttered as she looked around, trying to find whatever it was that had opened. They'd hidden the goddamned way down there, because this section of floor didn't look any different from the rest of it, and there was no obvious way to open it from the side. Ahead of her and to the right, a section of wall had apparently disappeared, revealing a room beyond. She moved over to it, shotgun at ready.

"What the fu...who designed this?!" she cried, exasperated at how needlessly fucking _creepy_ the room she'd found was.

Ahead of her, etched into or maybe mounted on the back wall was a huge motif of a giant demonic skull in front of another pentagram, all of it done into gray-white stone. On either side of it, set into their own little narrow niches, were burning...somethings. They were made of old dirty brass, pedestals with stands of intricately carved skulls, twists of metal stranded together forming the support pole, and another skull on top that held a burning crimson flame. At the base of the huge motif was a slightly raised square, and Kyra thought she could see something on it. Reluctantly, she moved forward into the room, assault rifle fully loaded and ready.

She quickly saw that it was the red skull-key and the platform it lay on was a square of what looked like...intestines. Squished, petrified intestines. A few severed human hands and a fucking tongue lay on the platform as well, almost like an offering. Feeling her stomach turn over, she drew closer, then reached down and snatched up the skull-key.

As soon as she did, something began grinding open to her left. Whirling around, assault rifle raised, she found a section of wall raising up rapidly into the ceiling to reveal a half-dozen fiends. She didn't give them a chance as she opened fire, throwing it into full auto and sweeping the barrel back and forth. The gunfire shredded them, sending geysers of pulpy gore all over the walls of the small chamber they were in. Bodies dropped, spent shell casings clattered the floor, and gunsmoke diffused into the air as Kyra emptied her assault rifle into the horde. When she'd run dry, they weren't all dead, but the pair of survivors were on the floor, bleeding out. She pulled out her pistol and capped each of them in their big, misshapen skulls.

Replacing the pistol, she reloaded and quickly checked out the small chamber she had revealed. Why had they been in there? There was no other way out, and as far as she could tell, no way to open it from the inside. She'd seen this before, but it still baffled her. What kind of devotion did it take to just be locked up in a room like this for...hours? Days? How long had they been waiting? Then again, they _could_ teleport, but she hadn't sensed any of that energy building beforehand, so they must have been waiting in there.

Were they free thinkers? Were they mindless slaves? Animals?

Questions for later, if ever. She left the room after finding nothing and opened up the skull door, slipping the key into the slit. It didn't return. Not that she was particularly wanting it back. The door opened up, revealing another open-ceiling courtyard. More slate colored stonework floor, and more ugly green-brown walls. Along the walls to either side of her were rectangular openings a few feet off the floor.

She caught movement in one of them, the nearest one to the right. A zombie. Kyra raised her rifle and popped off a three-round burst as soon as it stepped a little closer into view. A chorus of roars went up and more zombies stepped out into view on every platform. They opened fire on her, almost all of them Marines wielding shotguns. Definitely not good. She fell back to the relative safety of the doorway, playing firefight with the undead bastards. Bullets punched through decayed craniums and sprayed old blood all over the place as she dropped them one by one. When the last one fell, she moved slowly forward into the new courtyard.

Dead ahead, she saw another raised area. This one, at least, wasn't so high up that she couldn't just grab the ledge and haul herself up. Which was exactly what she did, the suit giving her enough strength to pull herself, it, and all her arsenal and inventory up. She came up onto a platform with...the exit! She could see the exit portal, an exact replica of the one she'd arrived on. The only problem was, it was locked up behind more of those iron girders. There wasn't enough space between them for her to squeeze through, even if she took off the suit. With a sigh, she started hunting around for some way to to get them to move or open somehow.

After a few minutes, she noticed that the platforms the zombies had been haunting were actually access points to lengthy rooms. She jumped back down and hurried over to the nearest platform, then pulled herself up and probed the area beyond. It was a simple room, no more bad guys hiding around, nothing of use beyond the handful of shotgun shells she found among the dead. And the big button she discovered mounted on the wall.

Pressing it, she heard another grinding sound. Moving back to the platform, Kyra saw that indeed the first row of iron girders was lowering into the floor, revealing a second row of them. Of course. She looked over at the opposite side of the courtyard. Well, at least this was easy. She hopped down, crossed the distance, and climbed back up. After retrieving some more shells, she found the button and pressed it.

More grinding, and the way out of here was open!

She moved back over to the platform and hopped down, then she froze as an awful, familiar hum began to fill the air. The area seemed to darken, shadows sliding over everything like liquid darkness. Something was coming. Her eyes flicked to the now available gateway, a route of escape, but she quickly decided against fleeing. No, she had to face whatever it was here and now. She had no idea what could be waiting for her on the other side, what the terrain was like, what kind of situation she might find herself in, and whatever it was could follow. But here, she was familiar with the area, she was well armed.

Kyra moved over to the doorway she'd originally come through and, after a moment's indecision, switched to her chaingun. There were two of them, whatever they were, as two burning pentagrams had appeared. Were those pentagrams bigger than the last ones? She couldn't be sure, but Kyra thought that they were.

"Shit," she whispered, spooling up the chaingun.

Well, whatever it was, they were going to get hit with a goddamned barrage of lead.

The sensations of power swelling, the very air itself trembling, was stronger than last time. The seconds ticked by far too slowly. The pentagrams continued to grow brighter and brighter, a powerful red light shining from them.

And then it happened.

There were twin puffs of black smoke, and out of them came…

Skeletons!? FUCKING SKELETONS!?

Kyra opened fire the second she had a target, but her brain kept trying to process what she was seeing. Two skeletons! They were _tall_ , easily nine feet in height, and mostly red all over. Their chests were encased in silver armor and one of the most immediate things she realized was that there were what appeared to be miniature rocket launchers mounted on their shoulders. The skeleton on the right was picked up off its bony feet by the sheer power of the concentration of lead coming from her chaingun. It came apart, flying into pieces and shrieking madly as it did. And while that put a definitive end to one of them, the other took the opportunity to attack her.

Two rockets burst from their nests and began coming right for her. Kyra tried to turn the chaingun on the second one, and actually managed to score a few hits, but then it got too late too fast and she reflexively put up the bulky chaingun in between herself and the rockets. They smashed into it and the explosion threw her back through the doorway she'd come through. Sparks flew as her armor grinded against the stonework flooring. She skidded along the stone until finally coming to a halt, her whole torso and arms hurting horribly.

Groping for a weapon, she struggled to her feet and saw that she'd just _barely_ stopped short of falling into the central pool of acid in the previous courtyard. Getting her assault rifle ready, she took aim and opened fire, hosing the skeleton down as it stomped towards her, coming for the doorway. The hail of bullets centered on its upper area and enough of them managed to hit its skull that it caused its bleached cranium to come apart. The effect was immediate: the rest of the skeleton fell into a pile of red bones and armor plating.

Unfortunately, it managed to get off another pair of rockets. Kyra scrambled to get out of the way as they flew through the doorway, and then _they fucking turned to follow her_. Were they fucking heat-seeking!? She kept running as they trailed after her, managing to get around them and back into the second courtyard where she closed the red door behind her. A muffled explosion sounded as they struck the door, which trembled in its frame, but otherwise held. Kyra let out a long breath, and then immediately growled in frustration.

Her chaingun was gone!

She saw it on the floor now, a twisty, mangled mass of metal.

Nothing to do about it now but go on. She took the time to reload her weapons as she walked back across the courtyard one more time. As soon as she was to the far platform, she hauled herself up again and moved on to the gateway.

It was humming with power.

"Blood Labyrinth, here I come," she muttered, and stepped aboard.


	63. EPISODE 02: They Will Repent

When Kyra snapped back into reality again, she found herself at the beginning of a long room atop a platform. Stairs led away from her and she had enough of a view to tell that she had absolutely made the right call in not running from those damned skeletons. There were a good dozen hostiles in the area with her, spread out along the length of the rectangular room she was in. Mostly they were zombies, but she caught sight of a few pinkies stomping around as well. And they all recognized her right away. A chorus of roars went up as the zombies opened fire and the pinkies began coming towards the steps that would grant them access to her.

She aimed her shotgun and fired almost without thinking.

Although she missed the zombie by a hair, she _did_ end up hitting one of the dozen and a half or so weird metal barrels that she vaguely recognized that were scattered across the room. It was one of the loudest mistakes she'd ever made, and a pretty lucky one. The second the slug shell connected the with metal drum, it straight-up exploded into a green cloud. And then the one next to it did as well, and the one next to that.

Within seconds, the entire lower section of the room was engulfed in green explosions, and she saw the monsters coming apart at the seams, being blown to bits as a result. She found herself laughing as she bore witness to the totality of destruction she had wrought with a single shotgun shell. The explosions went on for about fifteen seconds and when the toxic dust had finally settled, all she could see were pulpy, gory remains splattered all over the place. Now that the room was clear, Kyra took a moment to actually study it.

The Blood Labyrinth, it seemed, was constructed of that same pale green brick she'd seen earlier, with floors that vaguely resembled asphalt. Or maybe she was thinking of something else. The platform she had appeared on featured the gateway and one ugly fountain. It dominated the center of the raised area she stood on: an octagon of green brick with a rectangular pillar in the center. Each side of the pillar featured a really hideous face sporting curling ram horns, and blood spilled out of the mouth in a continuous deluge, where it pooled in the octagon and then ran out one side, traveling down a little stream that bisected the center of the room, terminating in a pool farther on. A pool of blood that was now littered with floating bits and pieces of monsters.

It seemed, she surmised as she kept looking, that the UAC presence here was a bit stronger. One corner of the upper tier sported a pair of bunk beds and a trio of workstations were pressed up against the wall, cabling running from them to the gateway. One of the chairs in front of the workstations was still occupied. A scientist sat in it, well, leaned in it really, his head to the side, a large crater in his temple from where he'd shot himself. She turned away from the corpse, finishing her sweep of the upper area.

The only other thing note was a window cut into the left side of the room. That bloody light was spilling in through it. Reluctantly, she moved closer and looked out the window. The view was on a fucking blood pond maybe twenty feet down. There didn't seem to be any way into or out of it, save for the open ceiling, and the walls, which were nearly as high up as her present location, were made of more green stone and were crawling with thick gray creeper vines that twitched and spasmed periodically.

Turning away from the sight, she moved over to the stairs and began moving down, making her way along the little blood creek. As she got down onto the lower level, she saw that the creek didn't actually end in the pool. It was simply redirected, coming out the right side and going over a fall through a narrow hole in the wall near the floor. Near that hole was another window. She heard an unfortunately familiar hissing sound coming from beyond, as well as more gurgling. Peering through it, she quickly switched to her assault rifle.

There was a large room beyond and a flotilla of flying skulls were buzzing around overhead a trio of fiends. She immediately started popping the skulls as fast as she could, given that they were absolutely the most dangerous threat. The fiends shrieked and began hurling fireballs at her, but she sidestepped and ignored them best she could as the skulls started making beelines for her. She burst the last one, spraying the area with bleached bone, just before it managed to reach her, then she quickly turned her rifle on the fiends and put them down with quick bullets to the head. Letting out her breath in a long sigh, she reloaded and kept going.

That was the name of the game: Keep Fucking Going.

No matter what, just keep going. She'd come this far, gone through two demon-infested bases and a section of Hell already. Just get through this and she'd be back on familiar ground. Probably ground overrun by screaming monsters, but it was familiar at least, and a lot closer to Earth. It would be a massive improvement over this place. Kyra finished making sure she'd killed off the hostiles beyond the window, then moved over to a door she'd spotted at the end of the room. It was similar to the medieval doors in design, but not in style, instead looking far more modern, made of polished metal. Had the UAC installed this?

She hit the button next to the door and moved on to the next room, which she immediately hated. Finding herself looking out over another large area with multiple levels and what seemed to be a trench that, yep, had blood in the bottom of it, running through a large portion of the area, was just the beginning of why she hated this place. There were torsos hanging from the ceiling in some areas, dripping blood. Human torsos, men and women who'd had everything below the gut ripped off. Their intestines hung from them like foamy, red-and-purple dead snakes. She made a note to cap each of them, just to be sure.

The place was also infested with more flying skulls, zombies, and fiends.

Just exactly who the fuck she wanted to see today.

Kyra got to work. She invested a lot of shotgun shells in the cleansing of this next area, blowing heads off of hostiles and scattering the whole place with bleached, scorched bone as she killed about ten more of those flying son of a bitch skulls. Seconds burned by, bleeding into minutes as she added even more blood to The Blood Labyrinth. The end result of her efforts was that she'd added to her demonic kill counter, grabbed some more shotgun shells and magazines, and abused her suit of armor a bit more.

She wasn't sure how long it was going to last, as there were several warnings she was ignoring relating to structural integrity failures and power shortages throughout the frame. After murdering her way through this section, making sure to put rounds through every single poor bastard that was strung up to the ceiling just to be absolutely sure that they were really dead, she found a pair of doors, and one of them was, of course, locked. It had that same red trim of skulls. The door next to it, however, wasn't locked down.

So she opened it.

It led to a much smaller room with a single pinky stomping around. She put it down with two shotgun blasts and scoped out the area. Quickly, she learned that this was, for the moment at least, a dead end, because the only other door in this room had another fucking red skull trim to it! Sighing heavily, she headed back to the starting point, as she'd seen another door near that area. Opening it up revealed another large, unnecessarily complex room that she quickly recognized as the place she'd originally found herself looking and firing into from where she'd started out. She spied the corpses she'd produced, as well as a few more zombies that had come in since then, probably to investigate what had happened to the others.

"I'll be happy to demonstrate," Kyra muttered as she took aim and fed the former humans their daily recommended dosages of lead.

As she started poking around this area, she really began to understand why they had decided to call it a labyrinth. Although this room actually wasn't complex at all, she realized as she began traversing it, it really just looked that way. There were multiple levels of platforms, another blood creek running through it, another goddamned locked down red-skull door, and a pair of lifts that took her a few minutes to figure out how to work. Her mind wandered as she hunted around, looking for useful supplies hidden away among the madness.

What must it have been like to work here? To _live_ here? How had the UAC scientists, the Marines, the technicians, how had they all reacted when they were told what their job was going to be? How had it been framed to them? Did they know the true dangers of being here, or had they just listened to their guts and figured it would probably be dangerous as hell here? What kind of paycheck did it take to get someone to fucking live in this place? To eat meals here and sleep? To be here for days or, God forbid, weeks?

Kyra liked to think that she would've refused it outright, but...well...if it were framed right and the money was good enough, maybe not. Maybe she'd see it as a way to test herself. Honestly, if she'd never seen any of the demons, if she'd just come across these barren wastelands, she could see herself believing that while the place might once have been populated, (obviously, _someone_ had built all this shit), it was now long empty. Because this seemed like a dead world. A wasteland of a realm. And honestly, part of her was deeply curious about this place. She was, on some level, absolutely fascinated by it.

What was this realm's history? Who had built all this and why? These were questions she kept coming back to again and again as she moved through these wretched places. It was no doubt a horrible, bloody history. Maybe they were looking at some kind of apocalypse scenario? What if this place had once been like Earth? And then some kind of event happened that poisoned the sky and killed the landscape and birthed these multitudes of living horrors? These monstrous things that could apparently continue adding to their ranks, given the fact that she now had frequently encountered her own kin among the hordes of the hostiles forces.

It was obvious that only madness ruled here, but had it always been that way?

"There you are, you son of a dildo," Kyra whispered as she finally found the red skull-key. It was, for whatever reason, tossed carelessly on the floor in a far corner of the room. She snagged it and then used it on the third red door she'd found so far, in the far left corner of the room. It led to a small chamber with a single pinky roving around mindlessly inside, and she quickly put it out of her misery with a pair of shotgun blasts.

There was a lift at the back of that room. She stepped aboard and pulled a lever. Her stomach jerked violently as the lift began its rapid descent, and now she found herself in yet _another_ large, unnecessarily complex looking room with several different levels, pathways, lifts, and a lot more blood flowing all over the place. Not to mention a good scattering of hostiles around. She moved onto a simple platform that gave her a decent view over the area, switched to her assault rifle, and got to work. Squeezing the trigger and doling out the lead.

The trio of flying skulls hovering around had to go first, and she rained bone fragments down over the undead and the soon-to-be-dead demonic things, then began to aim for the zombies scattered across the platforms and pathways. They were pelting her position with shotgun and pistol fire. She popped the head of a former human with a three-round burst, and then cried out in surprise as one of those damned floating pumpkins hovered up into view from one of the blood trenches. Cursing, she turned the rifle to full auto and hosed the monstrous thing down with gunfire. Right as her assault rifle ran dry, the pumpkin returned fire.

The ball of energy smacked her in the chest and sent her falling back flat on her ass. Pain shot through her from multiple points and she grit her teeth against it, dropping her rifle and switching to her shotgun. From a sitting position, she opened fire, pumping the shotgun three times before popping the big, stupid, grinning monster and spraying the others with its guts. Surging to her feet, she put the shotgun to further use.

Within a few minutes, she'd cleaned up the rest of the bastards, spraying the area with their guts and gore and blood. As the last body fell, Kyra quickly fed more shells into her shotgun, then reloaded her assault rifle. She did a quick check of her ammo. She wasn't running out, but she was definitely beginning to deplete her stocks faster than she could replenish them. Well, it was already that time again to hunt for spare ammo among the dead she'd just produced. As she did, her mind went off on its own again.

Mainly she was thinking about what she wanted.

There was the big obvious stuff, like: To get out of this alive and intact. To never have to face another monster ever again. To kill the UAC. And mainly for this to be the extent of the invasion, a few lunar bases and nothing more.

To see the Earth, whole and intact.

But there were other things. She wanted a goddamned drink. A bite to eat. Oh how much she would give for a hamburger with everything. Except for onions. Those were awful. Or steak and eggs. Bacon. Tacos. What she wouldn't give for a full plate of tacos and burritos and an endless supply of chips and salsa.

Vodka. Whiskey. Booze of any kind, really. Kyra wanted to get hammered. Although even in her fantasies she did wonder if she'd ever be able to get wasted again in her life. Now that she knew these things existed, she found the notion of letting her guard down that much difficult to accept. And a bath, too. A really, really long soak in really hot water. A Jacuzzi. To sleep, too. She wanted to sleep very badly, though the idea of doing it scared her worse than most other things. Then again, she'd been passed out butt-ass naked on the shores of Hell earlier and had apparently come out just fine. But that had been pure luck, even she knew that.

And sex.

Maybe it was stupid, the old underbrain talking, the primal parts of the human mind that still lurked in the older, darker trenches of the spirit, but she wanted to fuck so badly. Probably more than she wanted anything else. If she had to choose, if she only had one of those things available to her before dying right now, she'd choose one good, long, hard fuck. Preferably with a guy, but she'd take a sexy brunette with big, beautiful breasts. Or any hair color, really. She wasn't feeling particularly picky at the moment.

Would she ever get laid again?

It hadn't been all that difficult for all of her adult life. More people offered than she was interested in. But here and now, when her life was very likely being measured in minutes and hours rather than years and decades, where she was probably the only human for...ever, possibly, in this dimension, she could very well die before having sex again. In a way, she honestly hoped that she was the only living human being in this whole realm. She had a way out, and she (hopefully) wasn't too far from it. That probably wasn't true for anyone else who might be alive here. And this seemed about the worst place ever to be trapped in.

By the end of all her searching and musing and lonely thoughts about getting laid one more time, Kyra had managed only to find a few things. More ammo, for one. The zombies were packing, at least. Two red doors that actually ended up being the other two red doors that she had been forced to abandon for the time being. And, most importantly of all, a blue skull-key and a blue skull door, which she opened and stepped through, rifle at ready. And found something that she honestly wasn't in a great state of mind to see.

"What the fuck is this shit?" she growled.

The way beyond the door was a very small piece of land that gave way to a drop-off on all other sides, leading down to a pool of blood maybe fifteen feet down. She could see the way out of this room across from her, on another platform. And in between her and it were four rectangular pillars sticking up out of the blood, making a rudimentary path. And she would have to hop onto each one if she wanted to make it over there.

Because why the hell not?

Sighing, gritting her teeth in anger and frustration and exhaustion, Kyra girded herself for it, then made the first jump. She stuck it, waited for something bad to happen, and then when nothing did, made the second jump. As she was preparing to make the third, something shrieked very nearby and Kyra shrieked in response as cold fear shot through her system. She just barely managed to twist around, raise her shotgun, and blow the flying skull into bits without dying or falling off of the platform.

It felt like a miracle, and she stood there trembling for nearly a minute before getting herself under control and making the final few jumps. Feeling a lot more focused now, she opened up the next door and rode the lift she found down into another section of the labyrinth. And there she hesitated as she stepped off the lift. Kyra found herself now in a long stonework corridor with rows of torches along the walls. There were small, flat openings all along the base of the walls, spaced about six feet apart, down the entire length of the passageway, which was maybe a hundred feet long.

What, precisely, was this?

Something about it was extremely ominous. She took the opportunity to make sure that all of her weapons were topped off, even the rocket launcher, double-checking it to make sure it was ready to go at the drop of a hat. Nothing yet happened. Selecting her shotgun, Kyra took a step deeper into the tunnel. Still nothing.

Another step.

A deep, guttural growl came to her. She froze up, taking a step back, hunting for the source. The growl broadened, multiplied, drew closer. She heard a rapid ticking sound, like something striking stone over and over again. Breathing more rapidly, her heart hammering in her chest, sweating madly, Kyra kept trying to find the source of it.

Then she had it.

The sounds were coming from the slits near the ground. She aimed her shotgun at the nearest one, waiting. She didn't have to wait long. Thin, long legs of bone white emerged from the darkness and she stared in disgusted, wretched horror as a face emerged. An alien skull with far too many eyes, flipped upside down, peered up at her. Eight long, thin legs supported the hideous skull. It hissed and growled at her, then leaped.

Kyra squeezed the trigger and the awful spider thing vaporized into a plume of dark gore, spraying the wall.

"What is it with you fuckers and skulls?!" she screamed.

Another one emerged from the darkness, and then another from the other side of the hallway. Both began coming for her, and she saw more movement from other holes as even more spilled out into the tunnel.

"Oh fuck me," she whispered and fired the shotgun again.

She emptied that shotgun, vaporizing another seven of the ugly things, and bought herself just enough time to feed another eight shells into the weapon and keep blasting away. Dozens of them were coming at her now! What she wouldn't give for a goddamned grenade! Kyra was tempted to use the rocket launcher, but didn't give into temptation. What if something worse was waiting? Plus, it might not be the best to do that in a confined space. Although the suit of armor she was wearing could _probably_ stand up to it…

Something she didn't particularly feel like testing.

The shotgun ran dry and she dropped it, switching to her assault rifle and rattling through the whole magazine on full automatic. She had to have dropped thirty of the things so far but more were coming. She ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in, then kept going, hosing down the horde with as much precision as she could. The sheer amount of growling and hissing was beginning to overload her audio sensors, especially when combined with all the gunfire. What were these fucking things!?

How many were there?!

As her assault rifle ran dry, so did, finally, the tide of monsters.

She pulled out her pistol and put down the stragglers, then stood there at the head of a river of dark blood and death, of crippled skull spider bodies, shaking and breathing heavily. Her hands trembling, she slowly reloaded her pistol, then began to check over her pockets and see if she'd missed anything, any spare mags for the assault rifle or shells. But no, all she had left now were her sidearm and rocket launcher. The other two weapons were dead. She let them hang by their slings and shifted the launcher so she could get at it more easily.

Never knew what might be up ahead.

With a loud crunch, she stepped deeper into the hallway. No more of the skull spiders came. She kept going, moving slowly down the hallway, picking up speed as she kicked her way through the drifts of corpses she'd just made. All she could hear were her lonely footsteps. Kyra kept going until she reached the end of the passageway, which terminated in another one of those medieval style doors. She walked right up to it and reached for the button, then hesitated. Something was beyond the door, she was almost certain.

Why wait?

Mustering her courage, Kyra hit the button. The door slid open and revealed another large stone chamber, although this one wasn't quite as complicated. The edges were lost in shadow, but near the back of the room, she could see the gateway she was looking for. Something was wrong, though. She moved a little bit into the room, trying to see the edges. And her light-amp feature pushed back the shadows, revealing…

"Oh sick," she whispered.

Suddenly, the giant skull spiders made sense. The outer perimeter of the room was covered in thick webbing, and embedded in the webbing were bodies. She saw mostly humans, but some fiends were wrapped up in there as well.

Okay, so she was in a spider's nest. A giant demonic spider. And she'd just killed several dozen of her babies.

So where was the giant spider?

Kyra heard something overhead, the slightest sound, and felt cold black terror boil through her as she snapped her gaze upwards and locked eyes with what was easily the biggest fucking spider she'd ever seen in her life. Except it wasn't quite a spider. It was a human/spider hybrid. It had the body of a giant spider, with thick white legs and a huge, fat body, but the torso of a...well, maybe human was too strong a word. A female torso with a vaguely feminine yet very demonic face with a cluster of eyes the color of space stuck out of the body.

The monster shrieked madly as soon as it realized Kyra had noticed it and dropped from the ceiling. Kyra barely managed to get out of the way. As she stumbled backwards, struggling to get some distance between them, she grabbed the rocket launcher, aimed, and fired. The rocket leaped from its metal nest and rapidly began crossing the distance between the two of them. She was sure that she'd killed this big ugly thing before it could get going, so grateful that she'd hung onto the launcher and not used it for anything else.

Then the giant spider bitch queen gestured sharply with one hand and the rocket flew right off course, instead going into a wall across the room and exploding harmlessly among the webbing and the dead.

"What the fuck?!" Kyra cried as she hastily reloaded.

What had that been!? She watched as the spider queen gestured again and there was an ugly ripping sound from the right. Kyra looked over and saw one of the fiend bodies come loose from the webbing. No, not come loose. It was ripped straight out, as though grasped by an invisible hand. The spider queen raised its hand and then jerked it towards her. Kyra cried out as the body came right for her. She sidestepped, barely avoiding the impromptu projectile. What was she fighting!? She had to end this quick.

She kept strafing as she finished reloading the launcher and the spider bitch started to rip more corpses off the walls and hurl them at her. As soon as the next rocket was slotted, she drew several steps closer, aimed, and fired. This one got closer, definitely, but the spider queen again deflected it harmlessly into the ceiling.

"Fuck!" Kyra screamed, scrambling to reload her third, and final, rocket.

What was she going to do! Another body came flying at her and she jumped out of the way. Why in the fuck was there a giant spider monster woman in Hell who knew goddamned telekinesis? Seriously!? What kind of fucking sense did that make?! As she finished reloading and started trying to figure out how to deal with this problem that life had seen fit to throw at her, an idea suddenly slammed together in her head, and she was off and running before she could think better of it. It was time to put this armor to the test.

Kyra sprinted directly towards the spider queen, screaming madly as she ran, and prepared for the worst. As she got close enough, the spider queen did as she'd expected and gestured sharply at her. She was hit with a telekinetic blast and thrown backwards, but she pulled the trigger. This time, the rocket was too close to avoid. Kyra was thrown backwards even faster by another, much more powerful blast that consumed the spider bitch in a fiery eruption of death and smoke and force. She hit the stone floor and bounced a few times, and immediately several warning alarms began flashing in her suit. When she finally came to a halt, the suit suddenly died. Every single thing in it went offline. She laid there for a moment, waiting to see if it rebooted.

Nope. Nothing.

With a sigh, she activated the emergency escape protocol and the suit came off of her in bits and pieces. She sat up, shoving it off of her and listening to it clatter to the floor. She looked for signs of the spider queen and found the evil bitch splattered here, there, and everywhere. The rocket had more than done its job.

"Oh crap," she whispered as she laid eyes on the gateway and the workstation plugged into it. Those had, as far as she could tell, survived. God _damn_ that had been stupid! But what if- "Double crap," she muttered, and started frantically searching the pockets of the armor. If that PDA was busted she might be fucked.

But she found it, intact. It powered on and the files were all there. Sighing in relief, Kyra got up and retrieved her pistol, the ammo for it, and any other supplies that might have survived the chaos. The launcher was empty, but she kept it anyway, just in case she came across a few more rockets. A new energy seemed to fill her as she hurried over to the workstation. She was home free! Well, she was at least getting out of this place.

Firing up the workstation, she scanned the PDA and watched as the coordinates to Luna Station appeared. The gateway turned on, dark energy crackling as a hole in reality itself appeared. Without hesitation, Kyra stepped up to it and then disappeared into the portal.


	64. EPISODE 02: Epilogue

Kyra once more emerged from a glowering portal.

The effect of traveling between dimensions was beginning to get to her and she stepped wearily off the teleport pad. Slowly, she looked around, pistol ready for anything that might be prepared to kill her. She felt significantly more vulnerable without her suit of armor. But as she scanned the lab, hunting for threats, she found none. In fact, as she began moving around the room, which had obviously been subjected to the same conditions as the other two outposts she'd fought through, she slowly began to notice something.

That malignant presence she'd sensed almost since the second she'd set foot in Typhon Station, the haunting atmosphere that had permeated through both stations and Hell as well, was not present here. The place reeked, it looked like the set of a horror movie, it was depressing as hell, but that awful, pervasive feeling was absent. What did that mean? Had the survivors here successfully fought off the invaders?

Kyra looked at the dead scientists, the wrecked workstations, the bullet-riddled and blood-soaked walls. She had a lot to do.

With a sigh, she set to work.

* * *

The work was long, tedious, and miserable.

Kyra moved slowly through the facility, and she was at least grateful to learn that Luna Station was all one big building. No tram bullshit here. She worked her way through it, searching room by room, corridor by corridor, and…

Hardly found anything.

The demonic presence here was extremely lacking. Not that she was complaining. But whenever she wasted the occasional zombie she found lurking around, and a handful of fiends, and one injured pinky, she couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. She was missing something. But what? She kept searching, hunting for clues.

She stopped in Command Control, taking the opportunity to check out the two most important pieces of equipment: LifeScan and communications. LifeScan told her what she already suspected: yet again she was the sole survivor. And communications were busted. Refusing to be silenced any longer, Kyra set a diagnostic program on the comms network and, seeing that it was going to take about three hours to run in full, took a look at the other important features of the station. Namely power and oxygen.

Although Luna Station had been abused by the invasion, it was still intact, and she wouldn't be suffocating or freezing anytime soon. As she thought about that, her stomach had grumbled, and she realized at once how exhausted she was, how thirsty she was, how much she reeked. She had to take a piss pretty badly. But not yet. Not before she finished searching the area. She couldn't search the whole facility, but she could clear out Command Control without too much trouble. And so that's what she did, checking out every room and corridor and compartment that she could find. There were just a pair of zombies lurking, and she killed them easily.

When she was finished, Kyra hit the lockdown feature and headed straight for the administrator's living quarters. It was appropriately luxurious and relatively untouched. As soon as she double-checked it, she stripped down naked and took an hour long shower. She scrubbed away every last bit of blood, grime, sweat, and anything else that had accumulated on her body during her adventure across three moons and two regions of hellscape. She also used an emergency medical kit to deal with all her various scrapes, scratches, burns, and cuts.

It was the best shower of her entire life.

After drying off and dressing in a tan jumpsuit she found in the closet, (she'd find fatigues as soon as she could), she had attacked the kitchenette in the living quarters and eaten whatever she could find. Mostly it was frozen meals. She had a burger, two burrito meals, and a pepperoni pizza, as well as three cans of Mountain Dew Lightyear and two bottles of water. After sitting around for a little while, Kyra had intended to get back and resume her sweep of the facility, but she'd stood up and realized all at once that she was dead on her feet.

She needed sleep.

Although she had a great deal of reservations about sleeping, she knew she had to, and this was probably about as good as it was going to get, realistically. So she double-checked the lock and swept the room, the closet, and the bathroom twice more, feeling paranoid, and then finally had curled up on the bed and, pistol very close by, slept.

* * *

Two days passed.

She woke up ten hours later from a bad nightmare and took a long shower and had another meal, then had headed for the comms station. She'd learned that the main array was totally shot, but the auxiliary communications array was salvageable. Looking over the parts and tools needed, Kyra slowly realized that she knew enough tech stuff to actually do this. And so she'd set to work. As she hunted for the parts and pieces and tools she needed, she kept an eye out for hostiles and more weapons for her own personal arsenal.

The Military section was trashed, most of the weapons either missing or used up to fight off the invasion. She worked for about twelve solid hours, first gathering the supplies, then traveling to the few locations necessary to make the repairs. It was a mostly uneventful time, although at one point she had to put on a spacesuit and take a walk on the lunar surface to make one repair. She found a pair of flying skulls hanging out there and as she killed them, two things occurred to her. The first was a question: how the fuck were they still on fire if there was no atmosphere!? And: It seemed like they were left behind.

Had the demons pulled out?

More and more she thought that was the case. But why? She looked up at Earth when she was out there, hunting for signs of trouble, but it looked...well, like it always did from space. She felt terribly lonely as she looked at that big blue-green sphere, and had returned to the interior of the space station. As that twelve hour mark crept up, Kyra became frustrated because the exhaustion was coming back, making it hard to focus.

Normally she had a lot more endurance, but she supposed all that she had gone through had really taken it out of her. Or maybe it was a side effect of the gateways. Either way, she went back to sleep for eight hours in the administrator's dorm. After another shower and meal, Kyra returned to work. And near the end of the second day, she finished the repairs.

* * *

"Okay," Kyra whispered as she fired up the auxiliary comms array, "please, please fucking work. I need this to work."

She looked over the workstation she was sitting at, trying to make sure everything was functioning. She'd made sure that comms were up. She'd set the radar to scan the immediate area, to see if there was any traffic. (She'd also taken the opportunity to check the hangar, just in case there was a ship there, but they were totally cleared out, not even a basic vessel was left.) She'd even discovered the official call sign of the station: UAC Lunar One, for whatever reason. And the radar had just gotten a ping.

There was a ship within range.

Kyra leaned in to the mic and began transmitting. "This is Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan of the United Marine Corps on UAC Lunar One and I need immediate assistance. I am declaring an emergency situation and require immediate assistance."

She waited, listened, fought the urge to pray.

Nothing happened.

Kyra felt fear and anxiety ripple through her, and she quickly repeated her message. Then she waited. Still nothing. Kyra kept at it, repeating the message over and over again. Five minutes went by. Ten. Fifteen.

Right as she was about to scream in rage and frustration, the radar pinged again.

The ship was changing course.

It was coming for her.

"Oh thank fucking God," Kyra whispered. She snagged the shotgun she'd found abandoned in the Military HQ and began hurrying towards the hangar.

* * *

She was waiting for them when they began cycling through the airlock. She was clearly visible, hands not on her weapons. Attempts at shortwave communications had finally yielded some goddamned fruit. They knew who she was, her situation, and were coming in. They sounded extremely eager to talk to her.

The airlock door opened. Three people walked in, two men and a woman in full combat gear. "Staff Sergeant Kyra Morgan?" the man in the lead asked.

"Yes," Kyra replied.

"Private Jack Ward," he replied.

She hesitated. "Private?" He sure as hell didn't seem like a Private.

"Private according to the fucking UAC. This is Private Jennifer Taylor and Sergeant Pierce. Jennifer and I have just come from Mars. I need to confirm that you have indeed had contact with the forces of Hell."

"Oh yeah, I've had contact," Kyra replied, offering a grim chuckle.

"You've seen the zombies? And the red spiked things that throw-" he continued, but she cut him off.

"Fire? Yes. And the flying flaming skulls. And the big bulldog looking fuckers. And the fat, one-eyed pumpkin things that vomit balls of energy. And the giant fucking spider bitch. And the goddamned shoulder rocket launcher toting skeletons."

"Haven't seen the skeletons," Jennifer muttered.

"Perfect. We're really going to need your help. We just faced down the fuckers on Mars, Phobos, and Deimos," Jack said.

"You been to Hell?" Kyra asked.

"All over it," Jennifer replied.

"Then you and I have something in common. Okay, what's the plan? How bad is it right now? Is Earth under attack?"

Jack hesitated, looking startled. "I...don't know," he replied. He began to speak again, but their radios crackled to life and a new voice came onto the line.

" _Sergeant Pierce, you're going to need to get back here right now! Something's happening!"_ Whoever it was, probably their pilot or XO, they sounded genuinely panicked.

"Fuck," Pierce snapped. "You're the only one here?"

"Yes," Kyra replied.

"Then let's go."

Kyra secured her armor, (she'd managed to find another suit), grabbed her weapons, and followed the trio back into the airlock. It cycled too slowly for her taste, but finally finished. The quartet hurried across the landing pads to where the Marine's ship rested. They stepped quickly into the ship's airlock and cycled through again. She followed them rapidly through the ship to the bridge, where they found several Marines gathered.

"What is it? What's happening?" Jack asked.

"We just saw an explosion on Earth, somewhere over South America," the pilot replied. He was dead pale and sweating badly. Already his hands were going across the controls and he began to bring the ship up. "I'm taking us in."

"Good," Pierce whispered. "Fast as you can."

"Don't we have radio?" Kyra asked.

"No. Solar flare fried out comms," Pierce replied.

"Shit. What are we going to do?" Jack muttered.

As they began heading for Earth, they all fell silent as they saw another explosion, a mushroom cloud, appear somewhere in North America.

Kyra was the first to speak. "We're taking this fight to the surface." They all turned to look at her. She stared firmly back at them. "We're going to fight like hell."

* * *

 _Well, here we are again, at the end for now._

 _Sorry if it didn't turn out like you'd hoped. I know it didn't turn out like I had hoped. I went through three different plans of how to handle Episode Two. For whatever reason, it was a very difficult thing to write. I think that it was because it was another first contact situation, with a new character encountering the demons for the first time, and I had already covered that exhaustively in Episode One._

 _It sucks because I do really like Kyra as a character. But regardless, it's done. And for now, so am I with this story. It's going back to sleep for at least a year. I honestly really do have other fan fics I desperately want to get to._

 _So what's coming next and when? Well, Episode Three is Hell on Earth. Straight up DOOM ][. It's going to be really massive, probably longer than Episode One. I'm not going to even start working on it until after DOOM: ETERNAL comes out. I want a chance to play it and see if there's anything cool to incorporate into this story._

 _Despite its shortcomings, I hope you enjoyed Episode Two. Thank you very much for reading and reviewing. See you in the future._


End file.
